Talent Acquisition Manager - Tech

Description

We power people’s progress.

At Preply, we’re all about creating life-changing learning experiences. We help people discover the magic of the perfect tutor, craft a personalised learning journey, and stay motivated to keep growing. Our approach is human-led, tech-enabled - and it’s creating real impact.

We’ve just reached unicorn status with a $150M Series D, accelerating our vision to transform education through human-led, AI-enhanced learning. Today, 100,000+ tutors teach 90+ languages to learners in 180 countries - and we’re only getting started. As a category-defining company, we’re shaping what the future of learning looks like at global scale.

Every Preply lesson sparks change, fuels ambition, and drives progress that matters. Joining Preply means helping define the future of education at global scale, and building something that truly matters for millions of people, every day.

Talent Acquisition at Preply is a high-performing, ambitious team, deeply embedded in the business. We’re intentional about raising the bar: we iterate, use data, test new ideas, and learn together so we can hire the people who will help Preply keep powering progress.

We’re technology-driven, data-informed, and focused on hiring against business priorities and outcomes. Just as importantly, we’re team-first: collaborative, supportive, low-ego, and committed to building something meaningful together.

Building a legendary company should be fun.

About this role

As Preply continues to scale, Engineering remains at the core of our product, growth, and future. We're expanding technical hiring across complex domains and global tech hubs - and we're looking for a Talent Acquisition Manager - Tech to help us build a hiring engine that can match that ambition.

This is a hands-on management role. You'll directly manage a team of TA Partners with full reporting lines, while also personally owning complex engineering searches. You'll stay close to the craft, but your impact will go beyond individual roles: you'll help turn workforce plans into clear hiring priorities, translate those priorities into smart hiring strategies, and build the processes that allow us to hire exceptional talent with speed, quality, and focus.

You'll partner closely with TA Leadership, Engineering Directors, VPs, and our CTO to understand what the business needs, where the biggest hiring bets are, and how we should sequence work across domains and hubs. You'll own the full hiring rhythm: planning, sourcing strategy, pipeline health, calibration, weekly progress tracking, issue-spotting, and continuous improvement.

It's a great fit for someone who has already managed a tech recruitment function and team, and wants to grow within an environment that moves and scales fast, and holds a genuinely high quality bar.

What you'll be doing

Own the Engineering hiring engine end to end: understand and collaborate on workforce plans, clarify hiring priorities, translate them into hiring strategies, and make sure the team is set up to deliver against business needs.

Directly manage a team of TA Partners: full ownership of their performance, development, clear direction and priorities, coaching on search strategy and stakeholder management, and unblocking execution where needed.

Drive hiring outcomes across technical domains and hubs: take accountability for progress, quality, and delivery across Engineering hiring in our main hubs Barcelona, London and Kyiv, while personally owning a couple of complex and high-impact searches.

Build and optimize hiring processes: identify what slows us down, where quality drops, or where ownership is unclear - then improve the process so we can hire top talent in the most effective way.

Track progress through data: run a strong weekly hiring rhythm, using funnel data, pipeline quality, pass-through rates, time in stage, sourcing performance, and stakeholder feedback to understand what's working and what needs to change.

Lead calibration at scale: align a large and growing group of engineering interviewers and hiring managers on a consistent hiring bar, using structured calibration sessions, clear documentation, and ongoing reinforcement.

Flag risks early and solve them fast: spot blockers before they become bigger issues, bring clear recommendations, and work with TA, Engineering, and cross-functional partners to keep hiring moving.

Lead top-of-funnel strategy for Engineering: shape sourcing, talent mapping, talent intelligence, and employer branding in partnership with Marketing and Employer Brand. Build consistent, high-quality pipelines for priority roles.

Raise the hiring bar: define ideal candidate profiles, sharpen scorecards, lead calibration, and improve consistency in how we evaluate candidates across a large and growing group of engineering interviewers and hiring teams.

Elevate TA craft across the team: raise standards for candidate experience, sourcing quality, stakeholder management, data literacy, and business understanding.

Requirements

• Expert-level engineering recruiting craft. You run complex technical searches end to end, care deeply about candidate experience, consistently deliver strong outcomes on hard-to-fill roles - and coach your team to reach the same level of excellence
• Strong in-house recruiting experience. You've partnered closely with Engineering Directors, VPs, CTOs, or similarly senior technical stakeholders and earned their trust.
• Experience turning workforce plans into hiring strategies. You take business priorities and headcount plans and translate them into clear, sequenced, actionable hiring plans with strong process and execution discipline: operating rhythms, weekly tracking, early risk flags, multiple tracks moving in parallel.
• A track record of improving hiring systems at scale. You've raised pipeline quality, pass-through rates, sourcing performance, or hiring predictability across teams or locations, including through AI and technology.
• Experience leading calibration and quality across a large interviewer group. You've defined hiring bars and helped hiring teams make better, more consistent decisions.
• Proven people management experience in a high-growth, fast scaling environment. A strong manager who stays close to the craft. You take pride in excellent recruiting work and want to remain hands-on.
• Strong influence and communication skills. You create clarity, challenge thoughtfully, and build trust with senior stakeholders and peers.
• A team-first, low-ego approach. Collaborative, generous with knowledge, and motivated by raising the bar for Engineering hiring and the TA function overall.
• Fluency in English and readiness to work from Barcelona, London, or Kyiv.
• Our Principles
• Care to change the world - We are passionate about our work and care deeply about its impact to be life changing.
• We do it for learners - For both Preply and tutors, learners are why we do what we do. Every day we focus on empowering tutors to deliver an exceptional learning experience.
• Keep perfecting - To create an outstanding customer experience, we focus on simplicity, smoothness, and enjoyment, continually perfecting it as every detail matters.
• Now is the time - In a fast-paced world, it matters how quickly we act. Now is the time to make great things happen.
• Disciplined execution - What makes us disciplined is the excellence in our execution. We set clear goals, focus on what matters, and utilize our resources efficiently.
• Dive deep - We leverage business acumen and curiosity to investigate disparities between numbers and stories, unlocking meaningful insights to guide our decisions.
• Growth mindset - We proactively seek growth opportunities and believe today's best performance becomes tomorrow's starting point. We humbly embrace feedback and learn from setbacks.
• Raise the bar - We raise our performance standards continuously, alongside each new hire and promotion. We build diverse and high-performing teams that can make a real difference.
• Challenge, disagree and commit - We value open and candid communication, even when we don’t fully agree. We speak our minds, challenge when necessary, and fully commit to decisions once made.
• One Preply - We prioritize collaboration, inclusion, and the success of our team over personal ambitions. Together, we support and celebrate each other's progress.