Talent Acquisition Lead

Experience: 7–9 years
Location: Bangalore/Mumbai (Hybrid/Office as applicable)
Department: People Ops - TA
Reporting to: Head of People, India 

About Branch

Branch Overview

Branch delivers world-class financial services to the mobile generation. With offices in the United States, Nigeria, Kenya, and India, Branch is a for-profit socially conscious company that uses the power of data science to reduce the cost of delivering financial services in emerging markets. We believe that everyone everywhere deserves fair financial access. The rapid spread of smartphones presents an opportunity for the world’s emerging middle class to access banking options and achieve financial flexibility.

Branch’s mission-driven team is led by the founder and former CEO of Kiva.org. The company presents a rich opportunity for our team members to drive meaningful growth in rapidly evolving and changing markets. In 2019, Branch announced our Series C and garnered more than $100M in funding with investments from leading Silicon Valley firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, Trinity Capital, Foundation Capital, Visa, and the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

As a company, we are passionate about our customers, fearless in the face of barriers, and driven by data. As a product-driven org, we value bottom-up innovation and decentralized decision-making. We believe the best ideas can come from anyone in the company, and we create an environment where everyone feels empowered to propose solutions to the challenges we face.

We value diversity and are committed to providing an inclusive working environment where human beings of all backgrounds can thrive.

We are looking for a high-ownership Talent Acquisition Lead with 7–9 years of end-to-end recruitment experience, including strong exposure to startup environments and scaling teams. This role will own hiring across technology and business functions, partner closely with leadership, and build hiring processes that are fast, structured, and high quality.

This role will also include people management responsibilities, including mentoring recruiters, driving performance, improving execution, and building a high-performing TA team.

• Own full-cycle recruitment across engineering, product, data, design, and business roles (operations, customer support, finance, risk, compliance, POps, etc.).
• Drive hiring from intake to offer closure, ensuring high quality and speed.
• Build and manage pipelines for both immediate needs and future workforce planning.

• Lead, mentor, and coach recruiters and/or sourcers to deliver hiring goals.
• Set clear priorities, track outcomes, and drive accountability within the TA team.
• Support capability building through training, feedback, calibration, and structured hiring practices.
• Partner with the People team to strengthen hiring manager capability and interviewing quality.
• Own the team planning (capacity, workload distribution, and hiring coverage).

• Partner closely with hiring managers and leadership to define role requirements, hiring plans, and selection criteria.
• Advise stakeholders on market mapping, compensation expectations, and hiring feasibility.
• Run effective kickoff meetings and ensure alignment on scorecards and evaluation.

• Independently source talent through LinkedIn, referrals, networks, communities, and creative sourcing channels.
• Build role-specific sourcing strategies for niche and hard-to-hire positions.
• Create market maps for critical roles and competitor benchmarking.

• Drive structured interviewing, candidate evaluation, and decision-making.
• Ensure adherence to hiring SLAs, documentation, and compliance.
• Continuously improve hiring processes, reducing time-to-fill while maintaining bar-raising standards.

• Deliver a best-in-class candidate experience from first touch to onboarding.
• Represent Branch’s culture and values in every candidate interaction.
• Partner with People/Marketing teams (as needed) to support employer branding initiatives.

• Track and report key recruiting metrics: pipeline health, time-to-fill, offer-to-join ratio, source effectiveness, etc.
• Use data to identify bottlenecks and drive improvements.
• Maintain clean ATS hygiene and recruiting documentation.

• 7–9 years of experience in end-to-end recruitment, ideally in startups / high-growth environments.
• Proven experience managing and mentoring recruiters/sourcers or leading hiring pods.
• Strong experience hiring across both:
  • Tech roles (Engineering, Product, Data, QA, DevOps, etc.)
  • Non-tech roles (Operations, Customer Success, Finance, Risk, POps, etc.)
• Proven track record of scaling teams, building pipelines, and closing roles in fast-moving environments.
• Strong stakeholder management skills—ability to influence and advise senior leaders.
• Strong sourcing skills with an ability to close hard-to-fill roles.
• Excellent communication, negotiation, and candidate management skills.
• Strong affinity and expertise in data and analytics, including experience working with Applicant Tracking System (ATS) tools.

• Experience in fintech, consumer tech, lending, or regulated industries.
• Exposure to hiring for multi-location teams.
• Experience building TA processes, interview frameworks, and hiring manager capability.