Talent Acquisition Lead

Join us as a Talent Acquisition Lead

• We’re hiring Talent Acquisition Leads to set the strategic direction for Talent Acquisition across our key customer businesses. Each role will align hiring plans with business priorities and workforce strategy within a specific franchise:
• Retail & Payments – role to be based in Edinburgh, London or Manchester
• Commercial & Institutional – role to be based in London
• Digital X & Functions – role to be based in Edinburgh, London or Manchester
• You’ll partner senior business and People leaders, providing expert guidance across the recruitment lifecycle and delivering differentiated attraction strategies tailored to role, market and channel
• You’ll have the opportunity to shape how the organisation attracts and hires talent at scale, building capability and delivering meaningful impact on business performance and growth

What you’ll do

As a Talent Acquisition Lead, you’ll drive the delivery of scalable, efficient and high‑quality recruitment services, providing leadership and operational oversight across end‑to‑end Talent Acquisition services. You’ll enable your assigned franchise, function or geography to attract, assess and hire high‑quality talent aligned to current and future workforce needs.

You’ll build strong, sustainable relationships with senior stakeholders to shape a cohesive Talent Acquisition plan. You’ll continuously enhance attraction, sourcing and selection strategies, using innovative approaches to attract diverse and critical talent. You’ll do this while making sure strong governance, risk management and compliance are embedded across all hiring activities.

Your work will focus on:

• Attracting and hiring high‑quality talent, delivering a strong candidate and colleague experience while ensuring hiring outcomes meet business needs
• Delivering Talent Acquisition services across seniority levels that are informed by labour market insight, workforce demand and business priorities to enhance future‑focused hiring strategies
• Using data and insights to drive performance, tracking outcomes, identifying trends and enabling continuous improvement in recruitment effectiveness
• Leading and developing high‑performing Talent Acquisition teams, building capability in modern recruitment practices and acting as a trusted partner on talent strategy
• Driving strategic stakeholder engagement, influencing senior leaders with insights on market trends, risks and opportunities to support better workforce decisions

The skills you’ll need

To thrive in this role, you’ll be a highly credible leader with the presence and influence to operate confidently at executive level. You’ll bring significant senior leadership experience in Talent Acquisition within a large, complex organisation, ideally with exposure to regulated environments.

You’ll have deep expertise across the full Talent Acquisition lifecycle, alongside a strong understanding of modern, evidence‑based attraction and assessment approaches. You’ll also bring a proven track record leading large, diverse and geographically dispersed teams at scale, maintaining high performance while navigating transformation and change.

We’ll expect you to have:

• Strong senior stakeholder management capability, building trusted relationships and influencing decisions at the highest levels of the organisation
• Deep market insight and technical expertise, with the ability to translate external trends and intelligence into commercially focused talent strategies
• A data‑driven mindset, using insight and analytics to shape Talent Acquisition strategy, improve outcomes and drive informed decision‑making
• High levels of digital and technology awareness, turning emerging capabilities into practical, value‑adding solutions for the business
• Strong commercial acumen, with experience managing budgets, supplier ecosystems, and delivering measurable return on investment