Hippo
Talent Acquisition Lead
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About The Role
Hippo Digital is a rapidly growing digital consultancy passionate about building and delivering transformative digital solutions for a diverse range of public and private-sector clients. We are recruiting for a Talent Acquisition Lead to support our next phase of growth.
Our collaborative and agile culture empowers our teams to make a genuine impact. As a Talent Acquisition Lead at Hippo, you will be accountable for the recruitment strategy, priorities, and hiring outcomes across one of our key talent portfolios.
This is a senior, hands-on role. You will combine portfolio leadership with the direct delivery of critical, senior, and difficult-to-fill appointments. You will work closely with profession leaders and hiring managers to translate workforce demand into practical recruitment plans, while providing day-to-day direction and coaching to the Talent Acquisition Partner supporting your portfolio.
Our talent strategy enables Hippo to build the capabilities needed to deliver secure, scalable, and well-engineered digital services for our clients. You will use market insight, recruitment data, and commercial judgment to ensure we focus our recruitment effort on the right people, roles, and priorities.
Your Role in a Nutshell
- Portfolio Ownership: Take accountability for recruitment performance and hiring outcomes across an assigned portfolio, which may cover technical permanent, non-technical permanent, or associate recruitment.
- Recruitment Planning: Translate approved and forecast workforce demand into a clear, prioritised, and deliverable portfolio recruitment plan.
- Hands-on Recruitment: Personally lead the end-to-end recruitment of selected critical, senior, specialist, or difficult-to-fill roles.
- Strategic Sourcing: Develop sourcing and attraction strategies for recurring and business-critical capabilities, building proactive pipelines rather than relying solely on reactive applications.
- Trusted Adviser: Act as the senior recruitment partner to Profession leaders and hiring stakeholders, providing evidence-based advice on talent availability, salaries, timescales, assessment, and delivery risk.
- Team Direction: Provide clear priorities, day-to-day direction, coaching, and recruitment expertise to the Talent Acquisition Partner supporting your portfolio.
- Inclusive Excellence: Ensure attraction and assessment processes are inclusive, structured, proportionate, and appropriate to the professional disciplines within your portfolio.
- Candidate Experience: Maintain a consistent and engaging candidate experience, ensuring communication, feedback, and decision-making are timely and professional.
- The Consultancy Mindset: Identify professionals who combine deep craft expertise with the communication, adaptability, and client focus required to succeed in a consultancy environment.
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About The Candidate
- Talent Acquisition Expertise: Significant experience delivering end-to-end recruitment in a fast-paced environment, including senior, specialist, and difficult-to-fill appointments.
- Digital Talent Knowledge: A strong understanding of one or more of the talent markets relevant to Hippo, including:
- Engineering and Cyber: Software engineering, cloud, architecture, quality engineering, and cyber security.
- Data: Data engineering, analytics, data science, and related specialist capabilities.
- User-Centred Design: User Research, Content Design, Service Design, and User Experience Design.
- Product and Delivery: Product Management, Business Analysis, agile delivery, and Delivery Management.
- Associate / Contractor Recruitment: Sourcing, engaging, and managing flexible contractor or associate talent to meet short-term project demands.
- Expert Sourcing: Advanced direct-sourcing skills and experience developing proactive pipelines for scarce, specialist, or recurring capabilities.
- Stakeholder Leadership: The credibility and confidence to advise senior stakeholders, constructively challenge assumptions, and facilitate decisions when priorities compete.
- Assessment Expertise: A strong understanding of structured and inclusive assessment methods, from technical exercises and system-design discussions to portfolio reviews, case studies, and competency-based interviews.
- Data-Driven Mindset: A methodical approach to recruitment, using applicant tracking systems and analytics to understand demand, pipeline health, conversion, source effectiveness, and delivery risk.
About The Company
As well as a competitive salary which we’re transparent about from the outset, you can also expect a range of benefits:
- Contributory pension scheme (Hippo 6% with employee contributions of 2%)
- 25 days holiday plus UK public holidays
- Perkbox access for a wide range of discounts
- Critical illness cover
- Life assurance and death in service cover
- Volunteer days
- Cycle-to-work scheme for the avid cyclists
- Salary sacrifice electric vehicles scheme
- Season ticket loans
- Financial and general wellbeing sessions
- Flexible benefits scheme with options of:
- private health cover
- private dental cover
- additional company pension contributions
- additional holidays (up to an extra 2 days)
- wellbeing contribution
- charity contributions
- tree planting
Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at Hippo
At Hippo, we’re dedicated to creating a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace that works for everyone. We understand that having a diverse team unlocks our capacity for innovation, creativity, and problem-solving. Only by building a community of diverse perspectives, cultures, and socio-economic backgrounds can we create an environment where all can contribute and thrive.
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We actively encourage applications from underrepresented groups including women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+, neurodivergent, and people with disabilities. We are committed to providing an inclusive and accessible recruitment process that reflects our workplace culture. We are a registered Disability Confident Employer, Mindful Employer, Endometriosis Friendly Employer, and a member of the Armed Forces Covenant. Hippo continually strives to remove barriers, provide accommodations, and offer reasonable adjustments to ensure equity throughout our practices.
Hi, we’re Hippo.
At Hippo, we design with empathy and build for impact. We do this by combining data-informed evidence, human-centred design, and software engineering. We're a digital services partner who is genuinely invested in helping our clients thrive as modern organisations. Our delivery methodology is truly agile, from concept to reality, supporting innovation and continuous improvement to achieve your desired outcomes.
We firmly believe that technology should serve humanity, not the other way around. We take a human-centred approach to everything we do because we understand that complex problems require a service design approach. This means understanding how users behave and ensuring our solutions work for them in the real world.
Our combination of data, design, and engineering delivers bespoke digital services that make a positive and meaningful impact on organisations and society. We're confident in our abilities, authentic in our approach, and passionate about what we do. If you're looking for a digital services partner that can deliver real results, let us help you build for the future and make a lasting impact.
Hippo locations
We are headquartered in Leeds and have offices across the UK in Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, London, and Bristol. We're on the lookout for top talent nationwide but you need to be located within reasonable travelling distance from one of our offices which will be your contracted office location. Given the dynamic nature of a consulting business, you may be required to work on-site at a Hippo office or at an in/out of town client location for a number of days per week (client dependent) and therefore candidates will need to be open/flexible to travel. Plus, we offer a generous relocation support package of up to £8k (please ask for terms and conditions) to help make your move a smooth one.
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