[Hiring] Head of Talent Discovery & Intelligence Systems @Activate Global

Role Description

One of Activate’s core advantages is our ability to identify exceptional scientific founders at an early stage of their impact. As our first-ever Head of Talent Discovery, you will be responsible for transforming that advantage into a data-driven, continuously improving system that generates exceptional cohorts, meaningful frontier insight, and new product offerings.

This is a product and systems-building role at the intersection of science, data, and operations - not a traditional recruiting function. Your work will shape how Activate identifies fellowship talent, understands the frontier of hard-tech innovation, and improves how Activate and its partners make decisions about emerging science and scientific founders.

Primary Responsibilities

• Build and Run Activate’s Fellow Talent Engine
  • Own the System: Design and continuously improve the end-to-end fellow selection system, ensuring a rigorous, fair, and high-credibility experience for all applicants.
  • Strategic Sourcing: Proactively attract exceptional scientific talent for Activate’s programs, integrating our impact goals and specific scientific focus areas into a cohesive evaluation strategy.
  • Maintain Integrity: Ensure the selection process remains independent and credible while collaborating with the Development team on sponsor cultivation and fellow matching.
• Translate Pipeline Data into Insight and Strategy
  • Capture Signal: Evolve our systems to capture “reviewer signals” and founder trajectories, transforming application data into insights on emerging science and innovation trends.
  • Shape the Narrative: Articulate a compelling, data-backed view of what each cohort reveals about the frontier of hard tech.
  • Inform Impact: Partner with leadership and the internal Pathways team to leverage these insights to shape Activate’s impact strategy.
• Productize the Pipeline
  • Scale through Systems: Design the tools, workflows, and data systems that allow selection to scale. Collaborate with the Data team to ensure long-term scalability and data integrity.
  • Innovate Offerings: Explore and launch new products, conduct customer discovery, and test potential applications of pipeline intelligence, including reports, datasets, partnerships, and decision-support tools, to evaluate where Activate can create meaningful value for the ecosystem over time.
  • Leverage AI and new technologies to improve quality, speed, and experience.

Qualifications

• Product experience turning ambiguous raw material into structured systems, workflows, or offerings that create measurable value.
• Track record of owning ambiguous, high-stakes problems from inception to delivery and delivering results.
• Ability to translate messy data into structured insights and understand best practices for data integrity.
• Deep comfort engaging with technical communities and complex technologies; advanced training in science, engineering, or a related field is a significant plus.
• Ability to lead through influence, navigating complex trade-offs with clarity and empathy.
• Deep commitment to further developing Activate’s impact through science.

Requirements

• Full-time position with a competitive starting salary of $150,000.
• Generous benefits package that includes professional development, $2,000 in annual wellness funds, flexible paid time off, and healthcare coverage for employees and dependents, with 90–100% of premiums covered.
• Opportunity to join a retirement plan with a 3% match beginning after 3 months at Activate.
• Open to U.S.-based candidates; remote work is available from any state where Activate operates or at any of our hubs: Bay Area (CA), Boston (MA), New York (NY), or Houston (TX).

Benefits

• Professional development opportunities.
• $2,000 in annual wellness funds.
• Flexible paid time off.
• Healthcare coverage for employees and dependents, with 90–100% of premiums covered.
• Retirement plan with a 3% match beginning after 3 months.

Company Description

Activate empowers scientists and engineers to reinvent our world by bringing their research to market. We partner with leading funders and research institutions to offer the Activate Fellowship, providing the funding, community, mentorship, network, and time that scientists need to become entrepreneurs.

The results are game changing: Activate Fellows have launched 197 new companies since 2015. These companies have raised $4B in follow-on funding, created more than 2,800 U.S.-based jobs, and defined several new market categories. Activate supports fellows in Berkeley, CA; Cambridge, MA; New York, NY; Houston, TX; and across the U.S. through Activate Anywhere.