Talent Acquisition Director

Hybrid position at out Solana Beach, CA or Tampa, FL Offices. Ability to travel as needed to support multiple business segments and support M&A activities.

The Director of Talent Acquisition leads the enterprise-wide strategy, governance, and execution of talent acquisition for a defense organization. This role is accountable for developing long-range recruiting strategies, strengthening the organization's competitive talent position, and driving operational excellence across all hiring functions. The Director ensures that recruitment practices are compliant with government and defense-industry regulations and tightly aligned with business priorities and organizational values of accountability, integrity, excellence, tenacity, and teamwork. This leader partners closely with the Director of Workforce Planning to translate workforce demand forecasts into scalable, proactive recruiting strategies.

Essential Functions

• Develop and execute the enterprise talent acquisition strategy, ensuring alignment with organizational goals, workforce planning forecasts, and long-term capability needs.
• Partner with the Director of Workforce Planning, HR leadership, and senior executives to anticipate future talent requirements and design multi-year sourcing strategies for critical skill areas.
• Provide strategic leadership for the full TA ecosystem, including recruitment operations, sourcing, employer brand, recruiting technology, compliance, and candidate experience.
• Lead and mentor TA managers, recruiters, and TA operations staff to create a high-performance, data-driven, and collaborative culture.
• Establish governance and compliance frameworks for OFCCP, ITAR, and other defense-industry hiring requirements; partner with Legal and Compliance on audits, reporting, and risk mitigation.
• Own recruiting analytics and KPI frameworks to monitor hiring effectiveness, forecast recruiting capacity, and inform executive-level decision-making.
• Set the strategic direction for recruitment technology platforms, data tools, assessments, and sourcing systems; oversee vendor selection, negotiation, and performance management.
• Drive organization-wide employer brand strategy, ensuring consistent messaging and competitive position in the defense and aerospace talent markets.
• Represents the organization externally with universities, industry partners, government agencies, and professional associations to strengthen talent pipelines and brand visibility.
• Lead continuous improvement initiatives, piloting innovative sourcing methods, optimizing processes, and elevating TA maturity across the enterprise.
• Perform other duties as required.
• Regular and reliable attendance on a full-time basis [or in accordance with posted schedule].