Senior Talent Partner (Singapore)

About this role

ABOUT CUSPAI

CuspAI is the frontier AI company on a mission to solve the breakthrough materials needed to power human progress. While nature took billions of years to perfect molecules, we are harnessing AI to unlock trillion-dollar materials breakthroughs in months, not millennia. Our founding team is the most cited in the world, comprised of world-class researchers in AI, chemistry and engineering.

We are working on some of the hardest and most important challenges including energy, clean water, the future of compute, and carbon capture, and this is just the start of what our 'search engine' for next-generation materials will unlock.

We invite you to be part of a diverse, innovative team at the intersection of AI and materials science, working to create impactful partnerships that drive innovation, scalability, and industry collaboration. This work matters. Your work matters.

We’re on the cusp of the on-demand materials era. Join us.

THE ROLE

Due to ongoing growth following our $100m Series A funding round, we are looking for an experienced and adaptable Senior Talent Partner to join as a member of the People Team.

Working within our small but mighty Talent team, you will own and execute the end to end hiring process for various pipelines - primarily focusing on Technical Partnerships & Business Development hires - creating an exceptional experience for candidates and stakeholders as you identify, attract and engage elite technical and scientific talent.

YOUR IMPACT

Your work will directly impact the velocity at which we can solve challenges in critical areas such as next-generation computing, carbon capture and clean energy.

You'll play a central role in growing CuspAI's world-class team of technical partnerships specialists, researchers, engineers and applied scientists. As a gatekeeper of excellence and a builder of culture, the people you find will maintain our high bar and help drive the real-world application of our core technology, enabling us to unlock world-changing materials breakthroughs.

Working closely with the rest of the Talent team, you'll have the trust, autonomy and support to help evolve CuspAI's Talent function and scale the company thoughtfully and sustainably. You'll partner with some of the most cited researchers in their fields to decipher complex technical requirements and tell the exciting story of what we're building.

Drawing on your experience and curiosity, you'll build and execute sourcing plans to identify and engage genuinely game-changing individuals; mapping networks, identifying talent pools, and crafting thoughtful outreach alongside hiring teams. This is a rare opportunity to be an early, core member of the foundational Talent team during CuspAI's formative growth, directly shaping the company's culture and accelerating our mission to discover materials that address the climate crisis.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

Full-Cycle Technical Recruitment

- Own the end-to-end recruiting process across the full breadth of CuspAI's hiring, from software engineers, researchers and applied scientists through to technical partnerships, business development, and Country Managers for new regions.

- Design and implement strategies to attract and engage world-class, highly specialised talent (e.g. individuals with PhDs in relevant fields) from science-first companies, AI labs, and academic spin-offs.

- Act as an ambassador for CuspAI, articulating our mission and the impact of our AI-driven materials discovery whilst supporting candidates from offer through onboarding.

Strategic Partnering

- Collaborate closely with hiring teams to draft compelling job descriptions, define role requirements and assessment criteria, and design engaging and efficient interview processes.

- Organise and run interviewer calibration sessions to ensure understanding and alignment around the focus areas for each interview stage, and assisting with the creation/refinement of appropriate questions and/or tasks.

- Act as a talent advisor and thought partner, taking a data-driven approach to providing market insights on compensation, talent availability, and hiring trends within the Deep Tech and AI for Materials Science landscape.

- Work closely with the people team to evolve CuspAI's approach to DEIB in hiring - identifying opportunities to strengthen representation, removing barriers in our processes, and building pipelines that reflect the diverse talent in our fields.

Candidate Experience & Operations

- Execute a high-touch, seamless candidate experience that reflects CuspAI’s values, with the goal that every applicant - regardless of the outcome - becomes an advocate.

- Maintain rigorous data hygiene within our ATS, enabling and sharing accurate dashboards for hiring teams to help with visibility and engagement, as well as ensuring that hiring decisions are data-driven.

- Agree and uphold service levels around critical tasks such as reviewing applications, responding to referrals, conducting screening calls, scheduling interviews, writing up feedback, replying to candidate requests, updating stakeholders, etc.

MUST HAVE SKILLS AND QUALIFICATIONS:

- Experience & Context: You have significant hands-on experience (10+ years) hiring, placing high-level technical partnerships or scientific business development professionals for science or research-oriented organizations (e.g. AI for Materials Science, computational chemistry, or physics research companies).

- Adaptability: You thrive in ambiguity and fast-paced environments and have ideally worked in fast-paced full cycle recruitment in start-up or scale-up environments. You can pivot quickly when priorities change and are comfortable building appropriate processes from scratch where none exist, utilising your newly established internal network.

- Curiosity: You look to understand the “why” behind each new role, building trust with hiring teams by asking questions and doing your own research to get…