London, England, United Kingdom
Hi, I'm James 👋 I help seed, PE & VC-funded startups build operational foundations to go from 0 to 1. As an Ops, People & Talent leader, I translate business goals into systems, teams & processes to make growth possible. What this involves: - Whole picture: spot gaps & connect dots between strategy & execution, building the infrastructure that turns a small founding team into a scaling company. - Design the talent strategy: start by defining the EVP based on values & culture, then build employer brand & hiring processes to attract the right people. - DEI&B: I'm passionate about the importance of creating equitable & inclusive ways of working that strengthen culture, attract, retain & empower talent from broader talent pools. To this, I bring lived experience of being late diagnosed AuDHD (autistic & ADHD) as well as an allyship approach - being curious about understanding & removing barriers wherever possible 🌈🦋♾️🌻🏳️🌈⬛🟫 - I get hands-on as needed to find, engage, interview & land foundational hires who set the initial standard & direction, then design career frameworks with L&D enabled pathways to develop & retain top talent. - I train interviewers, select & set up People & Talent systems (ATS, CRM, HRIS), build & run initial performance cycles, define job families, role expectations, comp/benefits structures, etc. ready to hand over to appropriate team members as the company grows. - Data-driven approach: measure what's working, automate what's repeatable, continuously improve the candidate & employee experience from first outreach to offboarding. Background: - I've helped world class companies scale, building & managing successful Talent teams or being a hands-on IC as needed. - With a background in sourcing & end to end hiring across various domains & seniority levels, I understand how to build talent pipelines - from designing grad/intern programs to conducting C-suite exec searches. - Career tangents into project management, online marketing, data analysis, information security & GDPR have given me a broad skill set. This allows me to think in systems that connect technical, commercial & operational priorities. Where I add most value: - I can get hands-on if needed, but I have most impact when focused on strategy & cross-functional alignment, bringing my pattern spotting, problem solving & process designing abilities to build the systems & ways of working that enable companies to evolve without breaking as they grow. P.S. I'm near LinkedIn's 30k connection limit, so please don't take it personally if I'm not able to connect.
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 one of the most cited in the world, comprised of world-class researchers in AI, chemistry and engineering. We're fostering a culture of proactive curiosity and knowledge sharing, where interdisciplinary working comes naturally and is also actively facilitated. We support each other as we move quickly and thoughtfully. We're building and applying SOTA foundation models to solve real world problems in areas such as next gen computing, energy, and carbon capture, that will directly impact climate, environmental & sustainability challenges. After an initial $30m seed round in 2024, we closed a $100m+ Series A in 2025 with investment from NEA, Temasek, NVentures (Nvidia), Samsung Ventures, Hyundai Motor Group, and others. We also topped Sifted's AI 100 list of the most promising AI start-ups in Europe. We're ready for a period of considered growth. Not all jobs will be advertised, but there could be permanent openings and internship projects in our various teams, including: - AI/ML Applied Researchers & Engineers - ML Ops & Platform Engineers - Data Engineers - Application Scientists (ML-powered materials design/discovery) - Lab Automation Scientists (ML/software platforms, automated lab equipment/processes & data pipelines) - Technical Program Managers (Chemistry/Physics/Materials Science/ML) - Partnerships Managers (Chemistry/Materials Science) Interested? Head over to the careers page on our website: www.cusp.ai Can't see any relevant openings? It's worth completing the 'General Application' form so we can keep you in mind. Note for recruitment agencies: we're not currently looking for additional support as we're focussing on direct sourcing and applications.
Isomorphic Labs was launched in 2021 to advance human health by building on and beyond the Nobel-winning AlphaFold system. As employee number 4 - and the first Talent team member - I helped to build hiring processes and bring in foundational members of many of the various teams at Iso, including ML Research Scientists, ML Engineers, Software Engineers, DevOps, ML Ops, DevSecOps, Computational Chemists, Medicinal Chemists, Synthetic Chemists, DMPK/ADME, Molecular Simulation / Molecular Dynamics, Alliance Management, Compound Management, Data Strategy, Product Managers, Technical Program Managers, Legal, Operations, People & Talent, and any other areas as needed. The pace of growth meant that my role was split between hands-on hiring activities and strategic planning. As the Talent team grew, my focus moved back to Talent Operations - reviewing and optimising their talent acquisition strategy. This involved initiatives to enhance and scale recruitment processes, programs, tools, and systems to attract, evaluate, and secure top talent, deliver business objectives, and provide an exceptional candidate experience as the company scaled past 300 employees. Of the many achievements and highlights from my time at IsoLabs, I'm probably most proud to have personally been involved in creating, naming, and shaping the training for the first iterations of the 'Set for Success' behavioural interview stage. Iso's interdisciplinary culture is at the centre of the company's success, so it was critical to be able to properly assess core 'ingredients' of curiosity, growth mindset, adaptability, and comfort with ambiguity. The results and impact of this interview are evident in the exceptional quality of the people we hired and the progress the company has made through proactive knowledge sharing.
A side project that aligned with one of my passions, ISCN started as a LinkedIn group with a simple mission - to connect people who wanted to further their careers in information security. As we grew, we forged partnerships with training and certification providers so that we could provide discounts on some of the most popular cybersecurity training courses, including CEH, CISSP, Security+, CCISO and more. I've since shifted my focus away from this area, but you can still join the group - with over 150k members it's one of the largest on LinkedIn related to infosec careers. https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1368287
Named by the World Economic Forum as one of the world's 30 Technology Pioneers 2016, Synthace's no code DOE (Design of Experiment) platform is transforming the way biology is done by enabling scientists to effortlessly design, simulate and execute complex automation workflows without needing to write any code. 🧬 As their first internal Head of Talent Acquisition I put in place Talent systems (Lever ATS, GoodTime interview scheduling, HackerRank technical assessment, etc.) and hiring processes to introduce consistency across the various business areas. I also established mutually beneficial partnerships with Ada's List, BYP Network, and WomenInTech.co.uk to increase visibility of potential career paths in Life Sciences R&D to a wider audience, while also enabling Synthacers to take part in the BYP Mentorship Programme for Black professionals. The changes I made led to an increase in candidate experience NPS from 32 (Feb 2019 to Dec 2019) to 63.27 (Jan 2020 to Nov 2021). This wasn't measured before I joined.
Joined as the first recruiter in Europe, and ended up building a regional Talent Acquisition team to help the company scale extremely rapidly - exploding it's global headcount from 200 to 1,200 in around 18 months. ConsenSys is the world’s largest blockchain venture production studio focused on developing cutting edge applications across all major industry sectors, investing in disruptive startups, and consulting with global organizations & governments on decentralized technologies powered by Ethereum. Blockchain technology and dApps (decentralized applications) have the ability to decentralize power from existing authorities through the use of smart contracts, cryptocurrencies, and asset ownership.