VP, Talent

At Halter, we’re on a mission to enable farmers and graziers to run the most productive and sustainable operations. Our customers are using Halter to break free from the time-intensive constraints of conventional practices. Imagine watching 500 cattle stand up and walk calmly towards their next break? No quad bikes,...

We’re backed to deliver on a mission that matters by Tier 1 investors including Founders Fund, Bessemer Venture Partners, BOND, DCVC, Blackbird, Promus Ventures, Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck and Icehouse ventures.

To find out more, visit our LinkedIn & Instagram.

Halter is on a mission to bring the world's farming onto a smarter, more sustainable platform - and getting there means hiring a lot of brilliant people, fast, without losing what makes Halter, Halter. That's where this role comes in.
We're looking for our first-ever VP Talent: someone who can set the strategy that takes Halter to thousands of people by 2028, and stay close enough to the ground to make sure every candidate - whether they're in Denver, Buenos Aires, Taranaki or Auckland - has an exceptional experience. You'll own talent end to end: early careers, company-wide hiring, and executive search, from first sourcing message through to signed offer.
You'll be leading a large multi-functional team (15+ and growing), so this role is as much about people leadership and execution intelligence as it is about strategy. You'll build the culture, systems, and operational rigour that let a team that size move fast without losing quality. And you'll do it as a genuine partner to the Executive team - shaping the hiring strategy, not just executing it.
It's a rare opportunity: building a strong existing foundation into a world-class function, with real influence over how Halter scales, and a seat at the table where those decisions get made.
Talent Strategy & Vision
Create and execute Halter's end-to-end talent strategy - proactive and reactive, company-wide, spanning early careers through to executive recruiting.
Team Leadership & Development
Lead a high-performing, recruiting organisation, building a culture of excellence and accountability through hands-on mentorship, coaching, and continuous operational improvement.
Develop the leaders beneath you so the function can keep scaling without bottlenecking through you.
Operational Excellence
Engineer scalable talent processes from talent mapping and sourcing through offer delivery, ensuring a consistent, high-quality candidate experience across every level and stage.
Keep raising the bar on both speed and quality, never trading one for the other.
Talent Intelligence & Reporting
Architect organisation-wide reporting frameworks that make Halter's hiring data genuinely useful, not just available.
Translate complex talent metrics into narratives that help leadership make sharper calls on workforce planning and sourcing strategy.
Technology & Innovation
Partner with other leaders to architect and evolve a scalable talent ecosystem.
Use AI as a strategic lever, automating the repeatable parts of the funnel so the team's time shifts toward high-impact judgment and relationship-building.
Executive Partnership
Act as a strategic partner to the Exec team and senior leaders, influencing talent decisions by aligning acquisition strategy with long-term workforce planning and business objectives.
Bring a well-informed, independent point of view - this role is about shaping decisions, not just implementing them.
People Leadership Team
Act as a core partner on the People leadership team, contributing to the development and execution of a comprehensive, company-wide people strategy.

We think there are two kinds of backgrounds that could excel in this role - and we're genuinely open to both, plus anyone who doesn't fit neatly into either bucket but can make the case:
A seasoned high-growth Talent or People leader - someone who's operated as a VP or Director of Talent, People, or even CPO, and has scaled a recruiting function through a hyper-growth stage.
A Sales, Marketing, or GM leader with a strong bent for people - someone who hasn't necessarily run Talent before, but has a track record of building and leading high-performing teams, is familiar with a funnel and has a genuine passion for talent as a craft, and the commercial instincts to treat it like a growth function.
A proven people leader with experience managing managers and building high-performing organisations of 30+.
Strong data fluency, comfortable building and interrogating your own reporting rather than reviewing someone else's dashboard.
A track record of building scalable, high-volume processes without sacrificing candidate (or customer) experience.
Genuine enthusiasm for using AI and modern tooling to change how a function operates, not just to tick a box.
Excellent executive communication skills, able to distil complex data into a clear story for senior stakeholders.
Strong commercial and business acumen - you think about talent as a lever on business outcomes, not a service function in isolation.
Comfortable with ambiguity and a high degree of autonomy, with the judgment to know when to escalate and when to make the call yourself.
We don't rule anyone out on background alone - if you've got the operating chops and the passion for people, we want to hear from you.