Talent Acquisition Partner

About this role

Job Title: Talent Acquisition Partner Team: People Location: Onsite - Sawtelle (Between Santa Monica & West LA) Employment Type: Fulltime, Salaried, Exempt Reports To: VP of HR About Plug Plug is an automotive fintech startup that’s building the marketplace for electric vehicles. Consumers, dealers, and commercial partners trade in, sell, and auction used EVs through a platform built exclusively for electric, with nothing adapted from legacy automotive. Sellers can get an instant cash offer in minutes, backed by data-driven pricing and battery state-of-health analysis, with pickup, payment, and title transfer handled end-to-end. Every vehicle Plug acquires is sold through a competitive wholesale auction, where franchise and independent dealers across the United States bid in real time on inventory sourced directly from consumers, dealers, and commercial partners. The result is a single platform that gives sellers a fast, fair exit and gives dealers a dedicated channel for sourcing used EV inventory. Founded in 2023 and led by former Tesla executives, Plug has facilitated over $150M in EV sales since launch and is backed by a $20M Series A from Lightspeed Venture Partners. Join us as we build the AI-native transaction rails behind the used EV market’s exponential growth. Learn more at plugmotors.com. Why Plug • You'll own a piece of the biggest infrastructure opportunity in automotive. • You'll work on a platform built exclusively for EVs, with nothing adapted from legacy automotive. • You'll be part of an AI-native company. We're rethinking how work gets done at a fundamental level. • You'll work directly with operators who have scaled multi-billion dollar businesses in automotive, EV, and marketplaces. • You'll have real ownership, high autonomy, and a direct line to company outcomes. The Role Plug is looking for a Talent Acquisition Partner to own full-lifecycle recruiting for a defined set of teams. This is a hands-on, high-ownership role on a lean People team - you won't be handing off pieces of the process to sourcers, coordinators, or a separate closing team. You'll run the whole thing: from kickoff with a hiring manager through sourcing, interviewing, advising, coordinating, and ultimately extending and closing the offer. We treat candidate experience as a direct reflection of Plug - how we run a process, communicate, and close is as much a part of our employer brand as the job itself. You'll be a driving voice in how we hire, not just an executor of a process someone else designed. You'll carry 8-12 open requisitions across multiple hiring managers and functions, and you'll be a driving voice in how we hire, not an executor of someone else's process. You'll report to the VP of HR, with a dotted line to our Senior Recruiter for day-to-day search partnership and calibration. What You'll Own Full-lifecycle recruiting. Intake and launch meetings, sourcing strategy, screening, interview loops, debriefs, offer construction, negotiation, and close. You prioritize your portfolio against business urgency without being told which fire is hottest. Hiring manager partnership. Run structured kickoffs that align scope, must-haves, sourcing strategy, panel, and timeline before a search opens. Advise on market realities, leveling, and comp and push back when a plan won't work. Keep panels engaged and accountable through weekly pipeline reviews. Proactive sourcing. Direct outreach, referrals, and market mapping not inbound triage. You'll use AI tooling to compress sourcing, screening, and market research cycles, and you'll help us figure out what actually works. Build pipelines for recurring and hard-to-fill roles ahead of need. Interview quality and close. Design structured loops with clear rubrics and scorecards, coach interviewers on evidence-based interviewing, and facilitate debriefs that produce fast, clear decisions. Own comp conversations and close offers in partnership with the hiring manager. Candidate experience. First outreach, scheduling, feedback timing, rejection, offer every touchpoint is Plug's brand. Find the friction and fix it. Data you can defend. Keep Ashby clean and current, and surface funnel metrics to hiring managers and leadership so the numbers drive the conversation. You'll also contribute to interviewer training and new hire onboarding as our process matures, not building from scratch. What You Bring • 5-6 years of full-lifecycle recruiting experience, ideally in fintech, SaaS, or another high-growth tech environment. • A track record of owning searches end-to-end - from intake through close - without relying on a sourcer or coordinator to carry pieces of the process. • Strong sourcing chops: comfortable identifying and engaging passive candidates directly, not just working inbound pipelines. • Experience advising hiring managers on leveling, comp, and search strategy - and enough confidence to push back when a plan won't work. • Hands-on experience with an ATS (Ashby strongly preferred; comparable systems like Greenhouse or Lever considered). • A genuine belief that candidate experience matters - and specific examples of how you've improved it. • Comfort working in a lean team environment where you'll wear multiple hats, including some coordination and training responsibilities. • Excellent written and verbal communication; you can represent Plug credibly to a candidate and give a hiring manager direct, useful feedback. • Currently based in the Los Angeles area and able to work onsite in Sawtelle. Nice to Have • Marketplace, consumer, or two-sided platform recruiting experience. • Experience building or delivering interviewer training. • Exposure to employer branding or talent marketing. • Experience in a small or scaling TA function rather than a large, highly specialized org. Your First 90 Days • 30 days: Fully ramped in Ashby, kickoff completed on every open req in your portfolio, first offer extended. • 60 days: Pipeline health visible to every hiring manager you support; at least one process gap identified and fixed. • 90 days: Owning your functions end-to-end with minimal oversight, hitting time-to-fill and offer-accept targets, and shaping how we hire going forward. How We Work You'll be part of a small, high-trust People team where recruiters own their searches fully rather than working within a highly siloed sourcing/coordination/closing model. That means more autonomy and more visibility into outcomes - and it means candidate experience, hiring manager relationships, and ATS hygiene are all squarely your responsibility, not someone else's. Not sure you should apply? Do it. Research consistently shows that people from under-represented groups are more likely to talk themselves out of applying if they don’t meet 100% of the listed requirements. You don’t need to check every box. If this role excites you and you bring most of what’s listed under “What You’ll Bring,” we want to hear from you. Compensation & Benefits Annual Salary: $130,000 - $150,000 • Equity and bonus eligible • Health, Vision, and Dental insurance • 401(k) plan • Daily lunch stipend • Equity (based on role and performance) • Unlimited PTO • 30-day remote work from anywhere program • Fully stocked kitchen • Dog-friendly office • Ongoing opportunities for growth and development This full-time position is in-person, based in Sawtelle (between Santa Monica and West Los Angeles). We will not provide relocation assistance to successful candidates. We do not offer sponsorship at this time. Acknowledgments Plug is an equal opportunity employer. We don’t discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, national origin, ancestry, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, pregnancy, age, marital status, military or veteran status, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law. Plug will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records in accordance with the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring and the California Fair Chance Act.