Talent Acquisition Leader, Engineering APJ (R5758)
Melbourne · 15+ years experience · Onsite · Posted Oct 13, 2026
At a glance
- Experience
- 15+ years experience
- Workplace
- Onsite
- Location
- Melbourne
About the role
- Shield AI is seeking a Talent Acquisition Leader, Engineering APJ based in Melbourne to drive hiring strategy and execution for engineering talent.
- The role involves partnering with engineering leaders, delivering critical senior searches, and building a scalable in-house talent acquisition capability.
Responsibilities
- Translate evolving business priorities into a focused hiring strategy and partner with engineering leaders and PX Partners to understand growing hiring needs.
- Deliver critical hires by owning a portfolio of complex senior engineering searches from market mapping and outreach through assessment, offer, and close.
- Work in close partnership with PX/TA CoEs and internal stakeholders, define the strategic partner model for vendors and RPO providers, and manage their capacity and accountability.
- Build a scalable in-house TA capability by hiring, coaching, and leading an in-house TA team to foster a high performance, data-driven collaborative team culture.
- Drive hiring momentum and alignment by anticipating obstacles, resolving competing priorities, and equipping leaders with clear recommendations.
- Create strong technical talent pipelines by building relationships in specialist engineering communities in Autonomy, Robotics, Vision, Perception, Simulation, Machine Learning, and Infrastructure.
- Raise the bar on assessment and experience by helping hiring managers define what good looks like, running well defined focused interview processes, and driving candidate experience.
- Turn insights into powerful hiring decisions by tracking pipeline health, hiring outcomes, capacity, and spend, making practical changes based on data.
- Navigate a sensitive environment by working closely with internal teams to incorporate confidentiality, security, and role-specific eligibility requirements into hiring plans.
- Operate independently as the regional face of Talent Acquisition, building trusted relationships with local leaders and adapting global recruiting processes.
Requirements
- 15+ years of experience building and leading technical recruiting teams at scale in a high-growth aerospace, defence, robotics or autonomous systems organisations.
- Appropriate technical fluency to partner credibly with senior engineering leaders on areas such as autonomy stacks, robotics systems, embedded software development, distributed systems, simulation environments, and machine learning.
- Experience managing RPO providers and holding partners accountable for delivery, candidate quality, and experience.
- Experience leading change management, process redesign, stakeholder adoption, and operational enablement in support of Talent Acquisition transformation.
- Proven ability to navigate complex engineering talent landscapes and competitive compensation structures whilst delivering on ambitious HC targets.
- Experience using ATS systems, sourcing platforms, and recruiting analytics tools to drive hiring decisions and pipeline visibility.
- Experience with high growth, transformation, and ambiguous environments.
- Exceptional communication, data storytelling, and negotiations skills.
Skills
- ATS Systems
- Sourcing Platforms
- Recruiting Analytics Tools
- Autonomy Stacks
- Robotics Systems
- Embedded Software Development
- Distributed Systems
- Simulation Environments
- Machine Learning
