Founding Talent Acquisition & People Ops Manager - Ai Startup (Berlin)

Cherry Ventures is supporting our portfolio with this hire

Founding Talent Acquisition & People Ops Manager (m/f/d) – Berlin

Full-Time | Onsite (Berlin)

About Forgent AI

Forgent AI builds domain-specific AI agents to fix one of Europe’s most complex and high-impact systems: public procurement. This €2 trillion market is plagued by inefficiency, limited access, and lack of transparency — and we’re here to change that.

We are backed by Cherry Ventures and leading angels from OpenAI, DeepMind, and Meta. Our founding team has previously raised more than €500M and built AI systems at global scale.

We have achieved strong early traction with enterprise customers and have a full sales pipeline. Now we’re looking for exceptional talent to build the People function that will scale our team, attract world-class builders, and establish the culture and systems that turn this momentum into lasting impact.

The Role

As Forgent’s first People hire, you will own full-cycle recruiting across engineering, GTM, and operations while building the systems that help our team perform at their best.

You will work directly with the founders to scale the team from 10 to 50+ people — hiring exceptional talent, designing onboarding, and creating light-touch processes that enable everyone to do their best work without bureaucracy.

What You’ll Do

• Own full-cycle recruiting for engineering, GTM, and operational roles: source talent, design interview processes, and attract candidates who thrive in high-ownership environments

• Build foundational People systems: design onboarding that gets people shipping in week one, create compensation frameworks, and implement light-touch performance systems

• Run the full spectrum of team operations: coordinate founder calendars, book travel, organize team offsites and remote work weeks

• Handle operational backbone tasks: manage contracts, payroll, and compliance across multiple countries; own the full candidate experience from first outreach through day one

• Act as a thought partner to the founders: advise on hiring strategy, help close critical hires, and support building teams that ship production AI at scale

You’ll Thrive Here If You…

• Bring 2+ years of experience in talent acquisition or people operations at a high-growth startup where you built systems from scratch

• Have a strong track record hiring technical and commercial talent in competitive markets

• Think holistically about talent and business outcomes

• Default to action over perfection — you ship fast and iterate

• Are based in Berlin (or eager to relocate)

• Speak fluent English

What’s In It For You

• Fast-track to People leadership — build and lead the function as we scale

• Direct work with founders who have raised more than €500M and built AI at global scale

• Access to mentors from OpenAI, DeepMind, and Meta via our investor network

• Competitive compensation

• An AI-first approach to solving a mission that matters

• More insights here: Why Joining Forgent (insert link)

Join Us

Join us at Forgent AI and help companies win more business in the €2 trillion public procurement market.

Cherry Ventures is an equal opportunity employer and values diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, or disability status.