---
title: 'Founding Talent Partner (GTM), US at Sona'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/founding-talent-partner-gtm-us-sona-new-york-8r9133faag2e'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-05'
---

# Founding Talent Partner (GTM), US at Sona

- **Company:** Sona
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Compensation:** $150k–$180k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-06-10
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-05
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/sona/fac9cded-1c47-4206-a615-3dac9b0c889a

## Job description

Frontline work keeps the world running. Restaurants, hospitals, schools, nurseries, airlines, stores, emergency services. Together they employ 80% of the global workforce, over 3 billion people, and they're among the hardest businesses anywhere to run. By-the-minute scheduling, HR and payroll make them far more operationally complex than the average office, yet just 1% of venture funding has ever gone to software built for them.

Rising costs, wage increases, labor shortages and tighter regulation have made fixing that urgent. Sona is the AI-native workforce management platform for frontline organizations, with agents that match staffing to real demand and take the admin load off managers. That's a $500bn+ market the software industry has mostly walked past.

We've raised over $100M from N47, Felicis, Gradient and Northzone, signed more than 100 enterprise customers across the UK and US, and opened offices in London, New York, Austin and Lisbon. More on working at Sona here https://www.sona.ai/careers.

## About the Role

As our founding US teams in New York and Austin begin to scale, we're hiring a Talent Partner to build out the US hiring function. You'll be the first dedicated Talent hire in the region, owning how we attract and assess US talent and laying the foundation for our entire US operation.

This role reports into the Head of Talent, based in the UK. You'll work closely with our CEO, who has relocated to the US to help build our new region on the ground, our Head of North America Sales, and other key leaders based in our NY office. Our US story is early but proven: we've got customers signed, leadership in place, and real momentum, and now it needs scaling.

That means high ownership and the freedom to build, but it also means ambiguity, a fast pace, and priorities that shift as the business moves. This role isn't for everyone. If you need a fixed playbook and a settled environment, it won't suit. If building one from scratch is the part that excites you, you'll thrive here.

## Responsibilities

- Own hiring for US-based roles end to end, across our New York and Austin offices, from kickoff and briefing through sourcing, interviewing, and offer to signed contract
- Hire primarily go-to-market roles (sales, marketing), with some Customer and other roles as the team grows
- Lay the foundations of the US talent and people function as we scale: employer brand, process, ways of working, and ad-hoc people operations
- Innovate using AI to improve the speed and quality of hiring at Sona

## Requirements

- An experienced full-lifecycle recruiter, able to support and own end-to-end hiring independently in a high-ambiguity environment
- A specialist in hiring go-to-market talent into high-bar, fast-moving organisations, who understands what separates a strong hire from an average one
- A strong sourcer, for whom building an outbound pipeline is a standard part of their rhythm
- Data-driven and comfortable owning a funnel, using the numbers to troubleshoot, advise, and forecast
- An advanced user of AI tools to improve the speed, efficiency, and quality of hiring
- Experience in VC-backed enterprise AI/SaaS preferred

## Benefits

- Salary: $150,000 - $180,000
- Hybrid: NYC, minimum 2 days a week
- Share options
- 20 days PTO + sick days
- 401k contributions, employer match up to 2%
- Comprehensive health cover via Aetna
- Enhanced parental leave & pay
- Annual all expenses paid team retreats
- The latest Macbook and equipment budget for your home office
- Professional development budget
- Unlimited free books

Note: this represents a typical benefits package for a US-based, full-time employee. Exact details may vary based on location and employment type but we try to be as fair as possible to all of our team members. Please ask your contact in the Talent team to clarify the available benefits for you.

## About Sona

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Sona is a next-generation, AI-powered workforce management platform built for large, complex frontline enterprises in hospitality, social care, retail, and logistics.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series B, $45M raised April 2026)
- **Headquarters**: London, United Kingdom
- **Founded**: 2021
- **Founders**: Steffen Wulff Petersen (CEO), Oli Johnson (CFO), Ben Dixon (CTO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Workforce Management (WFM) Software, Human Capital Management (HCM), AI for Frontline Operations
- **Target customers**: Large, multi-site frontline enterprises with 250+ employees in hospitality, social care, retail, and logistics (B2B, Enterprise).
- **Mission or purpose statement**: To future-proof frontline operators with intelligent AI, replacing outdated legacy systems and unifying scheduling, HR, payroll, and engagement.

## Products & Services
- **Sona Platform**: An end-to-end, AI-first workforce management platform that combines Scheduling, Time & Attendance, HR, Payroll, and Employee Engagement. It is designed for complex, multi-site operations with variable demand.
- **Raffy (AI Assistant)**: An AI-powered assistant that helps managers make better decisions by providing real-time actionable insights, demand forecasting, and automated scheduling recommendations.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed.
- **Key Metric**: Total funding of **$115.5M**. Annual revenue is estimated at **$2.5M** (as of latest reports).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: N47 (lead), Felicis, Northzone, Gradient Ventures (Google's AI Fund), Italian Founders Fund, Speedinvest. Senior Advisor: David Campbell (former Chairman/CEO of Wagamama, PizzaExpress, The Ivy Collection).
- **Growth Signals**: 
    - Headcount grew **46% YoY** to 133 employees.
    - Raised $45M Series B in April 2026.
    - Has acquired companies (Yapster, Employee Republic Limited) to expand capabilities.
    - Customers include major brands like Hawksmoor, Popeyes UK, Paul Bakery, Côte, Voyage Care, and others.
    - Claims customers typically reduce labour costs by at least 1% in the first month.

## Competitive Advantages
- **AI-first Architecture**: Unlike legacy platforms that retrofit AI, Sona was built from day one with AI at its core, enabling deeper integration and smarter automation.
- **Deep Industry Expertise**: The founders previously ran a frontline business with over 10,000 employees, giving them firsthand understanding of complex operational challenges.
- **End-to-End Platform**: Unifies Scheduling, HR, Payroll, and Engagement into a single system, reducing the need for multiple vendors.
- **Measurable Impact**: Proven ROI with customers seeing 1-2% labour cost reduction in the first month and 25%+ EBITDA improvement at enterprise scale.

## Strategic Focus
- **Current priorities**: Scaling the platform to become the category leader in AI-powered frontline workforce management. Deepening AI capabilities (demand forecasting, automated scheduling) and expanding into new verticals and geographies.
- **Direction for growth**: Continuing to win large enterprise customers, expanding the partner ecosystem, and leveraging AI to automate more operational decisions.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Values include being "AI Everywhere" (AI-first in thinking and work), "Relentless" (full ownership of outcomes), "Curious" (deep knowledge of product and customers), and "Speed" (moving fast and acting with conviction).
- **Remote/Hybrid Policy**: Operates a **remote-first model** with offices in London, New York, Austin, and Lisbon. The company covers the cost of co-working spaces for those outside office locations. The team comes together twice a year for full-team retreats.
- **Notable Perks**:
    - **Professional Development**: Quarterly £200 budget for courses, conferences, books, and learning.
    - **Equipment**: £600 new starter budget for home office setup, plus a new MacBook. Supplementary £300 annual budget.
    - **Leave**: 25 days holiday + 10 flexible public holidays, with 1 extra day per year of tenure. Enhanced parental leave: 26 weeks full pay for primary parent, 8 weeks full pay for secondary parent.
    - **Health & Finance**: Comprehensive health insurance (Bupa in eligible countries), pension contribution (up to 5% match), and share options for all permanent employees.

## Sources
1. [getsona.com (Careers)](https://www.getsona.com/careers)
2. [linkedin.com (Sona)](https://uk.linkedin.com/company/getsona)
3. [sona.ai (About)](https://www.sona.ai/about)
4. [builtin.com (Sona)](https://builtin.com/company/sona-getsonacom)
5. [remotecorgi.co.uk (Sona)](https://www.remotecorgi.co.uk/companies/sona)

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