Role overview

CoLab is an AI platform that helps engineering teams accelerate product development by building institutional knowledge from design reviews and decisions. This Senior Director role is a foundational leadership position where you will establish and scale the talent acquisition function from the ground up, reporting to the executive team. You’ll own both the strategic direction and hands-on execution of hiring across engineering, go-to-market, and leadership roles as the company grows.

Key responsibilities

Set the talent acquisition strategy and multi-year hiring plan aligned to company growth targets and workforce planning objectives.
Lead, coach, and develop the talent acquisition team while deciding how to allocate work between in-house resources, external agencies, and executive search partners.
Advise the executive team and hiring managers on talent market realities, compensation positioning, and hiring trade-offs, using data to challenge misaligned expectations.
Design and implement a rigorous, structured assessment process including scorecards, structured interviews, and work samples aligned to the company’s hiring standards.
Own the talent acquisition technology stack and reporting infrastructure to provide visibility into pipeline health, time-to-fill, pass-through rates, offer acceptance, quality of hire, and diversity metrics.
Build scalable hiring playbooks for high-volume, go-to-market, technical, and executive recruitment across Canada and the United States.
Personally lead critical searches and close key candidates, especially during the early phase of building the function.

Requirements

Minimum 10-12 years of recruiting experience, including 5+ years leading talent acquisition teams and 3+ years at Director level or above.
Demonstrated success scaling hiring at a high-growth B2B technology company, ideally at Series D-F stage.
Proven track record hiring across technical, go-to-market, and executive roles.
Strong operational expertise in building process, data infrastructure, and tooling with measurable before-and-after outcomes to demonstrate impact.
Experience managing recruiting budgets, vendor partnerships, and complex offer and compensation negotiations including equity.
Data fluency with the ability to use metrics to drive decisions, not just reporting.
Executive presence and business acumen to partner effectively with C-suite and senior leaders on talent strategy.
Experience with global and cross-border hiring considerations, and recruiting in industrial software, PLM, CAD/CAE, manufacturing technology, or deep-tech hardware.

What makes this role worth considering

This is a plan-and-build opportunity at a rapidly scaling company recognized by Deloitte’s Fast 50 and Fast 500. You’ll work alongside an executive team that values talent strategy as a core business driver and will partner with you as a trusted advisor rather than treating recruitment as transactional. The role offers the chance to architect a talent function from the ground up across a remote footprint spanning Canada and the United States.