Head of Talent

Kodainya is hiring a head of talent to own the hiring engine across engineering, editorial, and go-to-market functions. The role sits within the leadership group and reports to the founder.

The hire will build sourcing pipelines, run the closing motion, and shape employer brand across roles that are structurally hard to fill in India. Work spans embedded engineers, aerospace and propulsion engineers, defence journalists, policy researchers, and commercial operators. The role runs from role scoping and market mapping through offer close, onboarding, and 90-day retention.

The role suits talent leaders who have hired against scarce technical profiles, built in-house sourcing teams, and want to build the people function at an India-first defence and drone company aligned with the Ministry of Defence's Aatmanirbhar Bharat framework. Kodainya is a builder and operator brand in the mould of Anduril. The hiring bar and the culture bar are the same bar. All work is done in Ahmedabad, India.

• Own the full-cycle hiring motion across engineering, editorial, and go-to-market roles, from role scoping through offer close and 90-day retention.
• Build the sourcing engine across LinkedIn, GitHub, defence-industry networks, alumni networks (IITs, NITs, IISc, DIAT), and referral loops.
• Map the market for scarce profiles including embedded firmware, propeller aerodynamics, airframe design, autonomy, and defence journalism.
• Run the closing motion end-to-end, including compensation benchmarking, offer construction, counter-offer strategy, and reference checks.
• Own employer brand across the careers page, LinkedIn, defence-industry events, and campus outreach at IITs, NITs, IISc, and DIAT.
• Build and manage the applicant tracking workflow, hiring dashboards, and hiring-manager scorecards.
• Partner with hiring managers on interview design, including take-home briefs, structured technical panels, and culture-add signals.
• Own compensation architecture across bands, including base, variable, and ESOP allocation frameworks aligned to startup benchmarks.
• Lead onboarding design for the first 30, 60, and 90 days, including buddy assignment, ramp goals, and manager check-ins.
• Build the people-operations foundation across policy, compliance, payroll partner selection, and grievance process, in coordination with finance and legal.
• Contribute to org-design conversations at leadership level, including hiring plans, headcount forecasting, and function architecture.
• Document hiring playbooks, sourcing scripts, and interview rubrics inside the Kodainya operations handbook.

• Bachelor's degree in any discipline, with 5 to 9 years of in-house talent experience at a technology, deep-tech, or defence-industry company.
• Direct experience hiring against scarce technical profiles, including embedded, aerospace, autonomy, or defence-cleared roles.
• Fluent in sourcing across LinkedIn Recruiter, GitHub, alumni networks, and referral loops, with a track record of running self-sourced pipelines rather than agency-dependent ones.
• Working knowledge of at least one applicant tracking system (Ashby, Greenhouse, Lever, Zoho Recruit, or equivalent).
• Comfort with compensation benchmarking, offer construction, and ESOP framework design for early-stage and growth-stage startups.
• Direct experience building interview loops with structured scorecards, take-home briefs, and culture-add rubrics.
• Comfort with hiring metrics, including time-to-fill, source-of-hire, offer-acceptance rate, and 90-day attrition.
• Willingness to work on-site in Bengaluru and travel for campus outreach, defence-industry events, and candidate meetings.

• Prior experience at a defence-tech, deep-tech, or aerospace company (Anduril, Shield AI, Skyroot, Agnikul, ideaForge alumni networks, or DPSU HR functions).
• Familiarity with defence-industry background verification requirements and security-clearance workflows.
• Exposure to campus recruiting at IITs, NITs, IISc, DIAT, or aerospace-heavy engineering colleges.
• Prior work building an employer brand from zero, including careers page architecture, LinkedIn presence, and thought-leadership positioning.
• Comfort with people-operations foundations, including payroll partner selection, policy drafting, and compliance basics under Indian labour law.
• Reading knowledge of one Indian language beyond English for candidate outreach.
• Prior experience scaling a company from 20 to 100 or 50 to 200 headcount.