Talent Acquisition Manager H/F

About Alta Ares

Alta Ares is a deeptech startup founded in 2024, building real-time AI for defense operations (ISR, C-UAS). Our primary clients are NATO-aligned militaries, with regular deployments during live exercises. Raised €2M pre-seed in May 2025 Products include:

• Real-time AI ISR module deployable on drones and tactical platforms
• Counter-UAS solution enabling autonomous drone takeover under GNSS-denied environment
• Full-stack MLOps platform for training & deploying military-grade AI models
• Data fusion and trajectory prediction

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Role & Mission

We’re looking for a Talent Acquisition Manager to strengthen and scale our hiring execution. This is a hands-on, delivery-focused role where you will drive day-to-day recruitment across critical functions, ensuring speed, quality, and consistency.

Recruitment & Sourcing
You will own end-to-end recruitment for key and hard-to-fill roles across engineering, operations, and business teams. This includes proactive sourcing and headhunting of high-impact profiles such as hardware engineers, software developers, defense specialists, and international talent. You will continuously build and nurture strong talent pipelines to anticipate hiring needs and reduce time-to-hire.

Hiring Execution & Candidate Experience
You will manage the full candidate lifecycle, from initial outreach to offer stage, ensuring a smooth and high-quality experience at every step. You will coordinate closely with hiring managers to run efficient interview processes, maintain momentum, and ensure clear, structured evaluations.

Process Optimization
Working within the existing recruitment framework, you will help improve workflows, tools, and practices to increase efficiency and scalability. You will track key hiring metrics, identify bottlenecks, and contribute to continuous improvement of our recruitment operations.

Talent Attraction & Market Presence
You will support talent attraction efforts by crafting compelling job descriptions and engaging outreach strategies. You will also contribute to building our presence in relevant talent pools (engineering schools, specialized networks, industry events) to strengthen our access to top candidates.

Candidate profile

• 2 to 5 years of recruitment experience with a mix of: - Agency/Executive Search background (headhunting, complex sourcing), - In-house/corporate recruitment (process building, stakeholder management)
• Scale-up experience strongly preferred: ideally an early TA hire at a company that experienced significant growth
• Demonstrated success recruiting for technical roles (engineering, R&D,hardware/software)
• Experience in defense, aerospace, deep tech, or highly regulated industries is a plus

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Skills & Capabilities

• Hands-on sourcing expert
• Data-driven: You use metrics to drive decisions and continuously improve recruitment performance

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Soft Skills

• Entrepreneurial mindset: Comfortable with ambiguity and building from zero
• Highly autonomous: Self-starter who takes initiative without needing direction
• Adaptable and resourceful: Thrives in fast-paced, evolving environments
• Excellent communicator: Ability to sell the company vision to top-tier candidates
• Cultural fit: Alignment with defense/mission-driven work and international operations

Nice to Have

• Experience recruiting internationally
• Knowledge of defense sector talent pools and networks