VP Talent

Why this role is compelling

• High-growth business with disciplined cash management and low burn, scaling toward $200M ARR
• Powerful macro and technology tailwinds as AI adoption accelerates across U.S. healthcare operations
• Unique moat combining proprietary real-world data creation with AI-driven operational workflows (Physical AI & real world models)
• Real enterprise adoption in healthcare operations, not experimentation
• Company-defining role at the center of execution, not a support function
• Real authority to design and enforce how the company hires, promotes, and exits talent
• Executive partnership with the CEO and leadership team during a critical scaling phase
• Opportunity to institutionalize a high bar without slowing the business

Why we are hiring a VP Talent (4 days in the office required)

• This is not an administrative HR role. This is a guardian role.
• Founder-led hiring judgment and informal performance calibration no longer scale. At our next stage, too much of the bar, speed, and clarity still lives in a few heads. That works early. It breaks as complexity increases.
• We are hiring a VP Talent to install a scalable, business-first talent and performance operating system, while personally holding the line on judgment where systems alone fail.
• You will be trusted to protect the company from desperation hires, leadership blind spots, and slow cultural erosion. Your job is not to optimize for hiring volume or comfort, but for truth, talent density, and long-term cohesion.

Who this role is for

• The VP Talent we are looking for is, above all else, a master of human judgment.
• You derive authority not from processes, compliance, or “culture programs,” but from a piercing ability to see the truth about people, often before others are ready to admit it. When you speak about a candidate or an internal dynamic, people listen because you see what others miss.
• You view hiring not as a funnel to be filled, but as a high-stakes decision engine where saying no is often more valuable than saying yes. You are allergic to interview theater, rehearsed narratives, and surface-level excellence. You look for motivation, judgment, and failure modes.
• You do not delegate assessment. You personally hold the line.
• The CEO trusts you to protect the company — and sometimes the founders — from tempting but flawed candidates or leaders. You are willing to slow things down, kill a “strong” hire, or confront a leadership issue early, because you understand the long-term cost of getting it wrong.
• Your leadership is not bureaucratic. It is psychological, strategic, and grounded in real scar tissue from growth-stage companies.
• You build culture the only way it actually exists: by who you hire, who you promote, and who you are willing to let go.

What you will own - You will architect and operate Kontakt.io’s full talent lifecycle across GTM, R&D, Product, and Operations, including:

• Hiring systems that consistently surface and close A-players
• Clear definitions of “great” for every critical role in the company
• Leveling, compensation, and promotion frameworks tied to real outcomes
• Performance management with measurable expectations and consequences
• Org design and headcount planning aligned with revenue, margin, and speed
• Leadership bench strength, coaching cadence, and calibration
• Culture enforcement through hiring decisions, promotions, and decisive exits
• Your mandate is simple and hard: raise talent density without slowing the company down.

What Success looks like (6-12 months)

• Build a world-class GTM and R&D hiring engine
• Define “great” for every core GTM and Engineering role in the Kontakt.io context
• Reduce time-to-hire to ≤60 days while increasing hiring quality
• Achieve ≥90% hiring accuracy (new hires meet or exceed expectations at 3 and 6 months)
• Eliminate prolonged vacancies in critical roles
• Install scalable leveling, compensation, and performance systems
• Implement simple, clear leveling across GTM, Engineering, Product, and Ops
• Relaunch performance management so every employee has measurable outcomes within 90 days
• Reduce comp and promotion inconsistencies by ≥80%
• Design an org that scales with speed and clarity
• Provide the exec team 12–18 months of headcount and org visibility
• Ensure clean ownership boundaries across GTM and Engineering
• Surface structural risks and single points of failure early
• Reinforce high-performance culture at scale
• Ensure hiring and promotion decisions consistently reflect Kontakt.io virtues
• Maintain ≥90% annual retention of critical talent
• Keep the company lean, direct, and ownership-driven as headcount scales
• Strengthen the leadership bench
• Ensure all Managers, Directors, and VPs operate with clear expectations and accountability
• Run tight calibration cycles that close leadership gaps in weeks, not quarters
• Upgrade or exit leaders who do not scale — decisively and respectfully

What it takes to win here

• You are a business operator first, not an HR generalist
• You run talent like a growth engine: quality, throughput, and leverage
• You have a high bar and low tolerance for politics or hand-waving
• You’ve scaled both GTM and deep engineering organizations
• You’ve been through the messy middle (≈100 → 500+ employees)
• You have the backbone to challenge the CEO and exec team early, with evidence
• You are trusted because you are right, not because you are agreeable