Head of Talent

About Avoca

Avoca is transforming how home service companies engage with their customers. Our AI-powered conversational agents handle every high-value inbound call, including booking jobs, qualifying leads, and driving higher revenue—all at a speed and consistency unmatched by human call centers.

We’ve expanded to 100 employees in under two years, backed by a high-energy, in-office culture across our NYC headquarters and Santa Barbara office. In a $500B+ market where missed calls mean lost business, we’re building the category-defining platform for AI-driven customer engagement.

We’re serving the largest brands in home services, and grew 10x in 2025. With a high-performance, in-office team in NYC, we’re moving fast to capture a massive, underserved market where 85% of missed calls go to competitors. Every hire here has an immediate and visible impact.

About the Role

As our first in-house Head of Talent, you will own end-to-end recruiting for all roles (GTM and EPD), build and manage a scalable recruiting arm, while also owning the core People Ops function as we scale. This is a critical role at an inflection point for Avoca. We are looking for the right person to scale our hiring and people systems that require speed, sound judgment, and operational excellence as our organization grows.

You will be responsible for building and running recruiting pipelines, partnering closely with leadership on hiring decisions, and ensuring the foundational people processes scale alongside the team.

This role is ideal for someone who can operate full-cycle recruiting pipelines autonomously with an owner’s mindset, run multiple pipelines simultaneously, and serve as a trusted partner to leadership as the organization scales. This role will be highly hands-on initially including running searches and build systems before scaling a team.

What You’ll Do

Talent Strategy & Headcount Planning

• Partner with founders and leadership to define short- and long-term headcount plans aligned with business goals and budget.

• Own hiring prioritization, sequencing, and tradeoffs across GTM, Engineering, Product, and Operations.

• Translate company strategy into clear hiring roadmaps and role definitions.

Recruiting Function Leadership

• Own full-cycle recruiting across GTM + EPD initially, while designing the recruiting function that will eventually scale.

• Build, manage, and develop a high-performing recruiting team (internal recruiters, coordinators, and external partners as needed).

• Define recruiting goals, success metrics, and accountability across the team.

• Establish consistent, high-quality hiring standards, interview processes, and decision-making frameworks.

Employer Brand, Community & Talent Marketing

• Build and evolve Avoca’s talent brand in close partnership with founders.

• Develop strategies for events, community-building, referrals, and long-term candidate pipelines.

• Ensure Avoca’s story, culture, and values are clearly and authentically represented across all candidate touchpoints.

Compensation, Equity & Offers

• Partner with founders to build and refine Avoca’s compensation and equity philosophy.

• Ensure competitive, fair, and scalable compensation practices across roles and levels.

• Lead senior-level offer strategy, equity conversations, and closing efforts.

What You Will Bring

• 6+ years of experience in talent, recruiting, or people leadership roles, ideally at high-growth startups.

• Proven experience scaling teams and building recruiting functions from early stage through growth.

• Strong judgment around hiring strategy, org design, and prioritization.

• Experience managing recruiters and building durable recruiting teams.

• Comfort partnering with founders on compensation, equity, and headcount decisions.

• Excellent communication and leadership skills.

Who You Are

• Self-motivated, entrepreneurial, and comfortable operating in fast-moving, high-growth environments.

• Thrives on owning processes end-to-end and balancing multiple initiatives simultaneously.

• Autonomous, self-directed, and comfortable working with ambiguity.

• A proactive and effective communicator.

• You are collaborative, organized, and efficient.

• Eager to work in person at our NYC office full time.

Why Avoca

At Avoca, you’ll be part of a team that’s building a category-defining company at the center of a massive market opportunity. We’re a fast-moving, collaborative team with a culture designed for builders who thrive on speed, iteration, and impact.