Talent Acquisition Manager

About the role Lean is hiring a Talent Acquisition Manager to operate in a player-coach role: leading a small talent team while owning GTM & Business hiring. You'll manage and develop the team, drive hiring quality and speed, and act as a strategic partner to leadership. If you're someone who raises the bar on every hire, builds systems that outlast you, and takes pride in the caliber of people joining a company, this role is for you. About Lean Lean is the leading financial infrastructure provider in the Middle East. We power some of the region's largest companies with APIs that enable payments, account verification, financial data access, and other critical financial infrastructure. What started as the region's pioneering Open Banking platform and quickly became the de facto leader in account aggregation and payment initiation in the region is now becoming something bigger: a multi-product infrastructure company powering payments, data, and lending across MENA. We've processed billions of dollars in transactions. We're trusted by 450+ clients - from Binance and Careem to Etisalat - and backed by General Catalyst, Sequoia, and Shorooq. Our $67.5M Series B was just the beginning. We're expanding into new markets, opening offices, acquiring businesses, and building capabilities that didn't exist here before. What you'll own - Hiring outcomes, hands on - Run GTM and business hiring end to end: intake, sourcing, screening and closing. - Build outbound yourself: target company maps, candidate archetypes and outreach. - Close your own hires: offers, equity conversations, and comp positioning against regional players and global tech. - Lead the Talent function - Lead and develop a small team: set priorities and targets, give regular coaching and feedback, hold them accountable, and support their growth. - Own the hiring plan with leadership - Work with the CEO, CFO, Head of People and functional leaders on headcount, sequencing and comp trade-offs. - Surface hiring risks early, set clear expectations with hiring managers on timelines and trade-offs, and advise on capacity planning. - Run request-to-hire end to end: business case, sign-off and JD before any search opens. - Quality, process and data - Agree what great looks like with each hiring manager before a search starts, and hold the bar through to offer. - Embed Lean's values into interview loops through role-specific scorecards, and coach hiring managers on structured interviewing and calibration. - Find inefficiencies, then build and maintain the recruiting playbooks that fix them. - Own the TA stack: Ashby, Granola, and an AI workflow layer (Claude skills, Notion agents) that lets a small team operate like a larger one. - Programmes and markets - Own the internship programme and Emiratization compliance. - Deliver the 2027 KSA Graduate Program with university partners. - Hire for LeanX, our stablecoin startup inside a scaled company. - Support the hiring and launch our new Cairo hub. - Build Lean's employer brand and candidate experience across all office locations. - AI in recruiting - Own the team's AI adoption roadmap. - Evaluate new tools against measurable process outcomes. - Set the standard for responsible and effective AI use across the TA function. What we're looking for - Talent experience at a VC firm at startup/scale-up phase, with at least 1 year in a people management capacity - A track record of closing senior GTM and leadership hires. - Ability to manage up. You can advise leadership on org design and comp, and you push back with data. - Structured assessment habits: scorecards, calibrated loops, evidence over instinct. - Excellent process management and ATS proficiency (Ashby experience is a plus), with high attention to detail - Prior experience hiring across UAE and/or KSA markets - Clear, concise communication skills. - Strong command of hiring metrics and reporting - You know how to build a company's presence and reputation in the talent market - Background in fintech (preferred) - Experience with Emiratization and/or Saudization programmes - Arabic speaker (desirable) NB. While we think the above experience could be important, we’re keen to hear from people that believe they have valuable experience to bring to the role. If you identify with the team and mission, but not all of our requirements, then please still apply!! Why Join us? We’re building the financial infrastructure for MENA. Not as a slogan, as a fact. Since 2019, we’ve become the first regulated Open Banking and Open Finance company operating across the UAE and Saudi Arabia. We’ve processed billions of dollars. We connect millions of accounts. We enable companies like Binance, Careem, and Etisalat to build products that were previously impossible in this region. Our recent $67.5M Series B from General Catalyst and Sequoia isn’t just validation: it’s fuel. We’re expanding into new markets, launching new products, and setting the pac