Talent Acquisition Manager

Manager - Talent Acquisition

Pepper | Mumbai, Maharashtra, India | On-site (Andheri East) | Full-time Reports to: Senior Manager - Talent Acquisition

We are scaling Pepper fast and hiring AI-native talent across product, engineering, and go-to-market. We want a hands-on Talent Acquisition Manager who builds the hiring engine and makes it move faster.

About Pepper

Pepper is the Agentic Organic Growth System that drives outcomes. Today's fastest-growing companies trust Pepper to drive growth via SEO and AI-search, combining strategy, AI agents, and embedded expert operators. We drive content-led growth for 2,500+ industry leaders, including Amazon, Google, Unilever, Atlassian, HSBC, Instacart, ITC, and Xiaomi.

We are organic growth infrastructure for the AI era, and we are growing the team that builds it. Atlas, our agentic operating system, is being built now, which means we are hiring senior product, engineering, and GTM talent at pace. The quality and speed of that hiring is one of the biggest levers on how fast the company moves, and this role owns it.

About the role

This is a builder's talent acquisition role, not a coordinator's.

You will own hiring at Pepper end to end: sourcing, screening, closing, and the system that makes all of it fast and repeatable. You will recruit yourself, hands-on and in the work, while building the pipelines, process, and tooling that turn hiring into a predictable engine rather than a scramble.

You will report to the Senior Manager - Talent Acquisition and partner closely with hiring managers across functions, and you will be responsible for filling roles that are often senior, technical, and AI-native.

Speed is the job. You will drive time-to-hire down, keep the funnel moving, and get offers closed, without lowering the bar. You should think in systems, move with urgency, and take real ownership of outcomes.

This is also a high-intensity sourcing role. On many days it involves rigorous cold calling, up to 50 to 60 or more calls a day, and active headhunting to reach the strong passive candidates who will never come through inbound.

This role is based out of Pepper's Mumbai office in Andheri East and is on-site.

What you will own

Full-cycle recruiting

• Run end-to-end recruiting across open roles: intake, sourcing, screening, interview coordination, feedback, and closing.
• Own a portfolio of live requisitions across functions, including senior product, engineering, and go-to-market hires.
• Conduct sharp first-round screens that filter for quality early, so hiring managers only spend time on strong candidates.
• Manage offers and closing: negotiate, sell the mission, and get the right people to say yes.

Building the hiring system

• Build and run the hiring engine: pipeline stages, a clean tracker, structured scorecards, and clear SLAs at every step.
• Define and watch the metrics that matter, time-to-hire, pipeline conversion, source effectiveness, and quality-of-hire, and keep driving them in the right direction.
• Standardize interview kits, scorecards, and role scorecards with hiring managers so evaluation is consistent and fast.
• Continuously remove friction from the process. Find where candidates stall or drop, and fix the funnel, not just the next req.

Sourcing and pipeline

• Build a proactive sourcing engine across outbound, referrals, communities, and AI-assisted search, rather than relying on inbound.
• Headhunt and cold call rigorously, often 50 to 60 or more calls a day, to reach and engage passive candidates and convert them into live pipeline.
• Build and maintain talent pools for critical and repeat roles, so key hires start with a warm pipeline.
• Use AI tools across sourcing, screening, and outreach to compress cycle time and increase reach.

Stakeholder partnership and experience

• Partner with hiring managers and your Senior Manager - Talent Acquisition on crisp role definitions, must-have versus nice-to-have, and realistic timelines.
• Keep stakeholders informed with simple, current pipeline visibility and honest status.
• Own candidate experience end to end, fast, respectful, and clear communication, so Pepper's brand strengthens with every conversation.

What you bring to the table

Must-have

• 5 to 6 years in talent acquisition. Full-cycle recruiting experience, ideally in high-growth, startup, or scale-up environments where you owned reqs end to end.
• You think in systems. You build process, pipelines, and tooling. You are as comfortable designing a hiring funnel as you are working a single req.
• You are super hands-on. You source, screen, and close yourself. You are in the work, not sitting above it.
• You move fast and get things done. Strong bias to action, high ownership, and a track record of cutting cycle time without dropping quality.
• You are relentless on outreach. You are comfortable with high-volume cold calling, 50 to 60 or more calls a day when the role demands it, and persistent headhunting to land strong passive candidates.
• You can close. You engage and close senior and technical candidates, and you communicate the mission in a way that lands.
• You are organized and data-driven. You run a clean, current pipeline, communicate crisply, and make decisions from funnel data, not gut feel alone.

Strong plus

• You recruit AI-native. You actively use AI tools to source, screen, and move faster, and you can tell a genuinely AI-native candidate from one who only name-drops.
• You have hired technical and product roles. Experience filling engineering, product, or other senior or specialized roles.
• You have built a function or process from scratch. You have set up recruiting systems, trackers, or pipelines where little existed before.

Why this role matters

Pepper is hiring the people who will build an AI-native company, and the hiring engine is the constraint on how fast we grow. Get this right, and every team moves faster. This role builds and runs that engine.

If you think in systems, love being hands-on, and want to move fast and own outcomes, this is the seat.

Location: On-site, Pepper, Mumbai (Andheri East). This is a long-term role.