---
title: 'Principal, Talent Intelligence – US Lending at OakNorth'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/principal-talent-intelligence-us-lending-oaknorth-new-york-vet1tphz4g3n'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-15'
---

# Principal, Talent Intelligence – US Lending at OakNorth

- **Company:** OakNorth
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-09-29
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-15
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/oaknorth/113a0e3b-032a-469f-9f7f-1f17b763c429

## Job description

We want to know the US lending talent market better than anyone else. OakNorth is building its US lending business, and we are looking for someone to build the talent intelligence capability behind that growth. Your job is to know where the exceptional people are before we need to hire them. You'll map the market, understand how the best lending teams are built, develop relationships with outstanding people across the industry and give our leadership real-time intelligence on where talent, teams and opportunities are moving. This isn't a traditional recruiting role focused on filling vacancies. It's a strategic, external-facing role for someone who loves understanding markets, finding people others don't know about and building relationships long before there is a job to discuss. You'll work directly with senior leaders across our US Lending business while being part of OakNorth's Global Talent Acquisition team. You'll have the opportunity to build this capability from the ground up.

## What You'll Do

Know the Market Become our expert on talent across the US commercial lending ecosystem, including:

- Commercial and middle-market banking
- Private credit and direct lending
- Specialty finance
- Sponsor finance
- Asset-based lending
- Corporate banking

You'll understand the firms, teams and individuals shaping these markets — who's growing, who's moving, where teams are being built and where the next generation of talent is emerging. Find Exceptional People Before We Need Them We don't want to start searching when a vacancy opens. You'll continuously identify and build relationships with exceptional people who could become important to OakNorth in the future. You'll find them through:

- Market mapping and original research
- Industry relationships and referrals
- Conferences and professional networks
- Deal and transaction activity
- Industry publications and awards
- Leadership moves and team changes
- AI-powered research and intelligence tools

You'll be curious enough to look beyond LinkedIn and creative enough to uncover people our competitors haven't found.

Build Trusted Relationships You'll develop a powerful network across the US lending market. These won't always be recruitment conversations. You'll build long-term relationships with senior lenders, emerging leaders and market influencers — understanding their careers, ambitions and views on the market. Over time, we want OakNorth to be one of the first calls exceptional lending professionals make when they're thinking about their careers.

Turn Intelligence Into Business Insight You'll turn what you're seeing in the market into useful intelligence for our leadership team. That could include:

- Talent and competitor heatmaps
- Team and leadership movements
- Compensation intelligence
- Emerging talent
- Competitor hiring activity
- New market entrants
- Team stability and succession risk
- Geographic talent pools
- Market opportunities

The goal isn't research for the sake of research. Your insight should help OakNorth make better decisions about where, when and who we hire.

Build Our Talent Intelligence Platform You'll use Ashby as our Talent CRM and create a living picture of the US lending talent market. You'll build and maintain:

- Talent communities
- Executive relationships
- Competitor maps
- Market intelligence
- Future hiring pipelines
- Relationship history
- Talent dashboards

You'll help us move from traditional recruiting pipelines towards a long-term talent ecosystem.

Experiment With AI We want to rethink how talent intelligence is built. You'll experiment with AI and emerging technology to improve research, market mapping, relationship management, workflow automation and reporting. You'll have the freedom to test new approaches rather than simply follow an established recruiting playbook.

What Success Looks Like Within your first year, we want you to have built a talent intelligence capability that our US Lending leaders actively use to make decisions. We should have:

- A clear map of the most important firms, teams and talent across our priority lending markets
- Strong relationships with exceptional people before vacancies exist
- Live intelligence on competitor teams and market movements
- High-quality future talent pipelines
- Better visibility of compensation and talent trends
- A growing network of emerging and established lending leaders
- An Ashby Talent CRM that contains genuinely valuable market intelligence

Most importantly, when we decide to enter a market, build a team or make a critical hire, we should already know who we want to speak to.

Who We're Looking For We're deliberately open-minded about where you've built your career. You might currently work in:

- Executive search
- Talent intelligence or strategic sourcing
- Commercial banking or private credit
- Lending-focused research or market intelligence
- Strategy or competitive intelligence
- Another environment where you've developed deep knowledge of the US lending market

We're more interested in how you think and operate than whether you've previously held this exact title. You'll likely be someone who:

- Understands the US commercial lending landscape and can quickly build credibility with senior professionals
- Loves researching markets and finding people others miss
- Is naturally curious about firms, teams, deals and people
- Builds relationships without needing an immediate transaction
- Can turn fragmented market information into useful commercial insight
- Is comfortable speaking with senior executives
- Has a strong hunter mentality and isn't reliant on inbound applications
- Enjoys building something from scratch
- Uses technology and AI to work smarter and move faster
- Has an entrepreneurial mindset and strong bias for action

An existing network across US lending would be valuable, but the ability to build one is just as important.

Why OakNorth? OakNorth was founded by entrepreneurs to help ambitious businesses scale. Since launching in 2015, we've built one of the UK's leading commercial banks and are now building the next chapter of OakNorth in the United States. This role gives you something unusual: the opportunity to create a talent intelligence capability from scratch and work directly with the leaders building our US lending business. There isn't an established playbook to inherit. You'll help write it.

## Benefits and Perks

- 401k plan with Principal (ON match up to 4%)
- Medical Care (managed through Insperity) - employees can add their family to their plan if needed
- Dental & Vision bundle
- Insperity Health Savings Account Program - this is a tax-advantaged employee benefit which can help manage health care costs by allowing employees to set aside some of their current earnings on a pretax basis for reimbursement of qualified health care expenses during the plan year
- EAP
- 20 days Holiday

## About OakNorth

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: OakNorth is a UK-based digital bank founded by entrepreneurs, providing fast, flexible business loans and competitive savings accounts to support ambitious businesses and savers.
- **Entity Type**: Private (fully-licensed digital bank, profitable; not publicly listed)
- **Headquarters**: London, United Kingdom
- **Founded**: 2015
- **Founders**: Rishi Khosla and Joel Perlman

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Digital banking, commercial lending, retail savings
- **Target customers**: Lower mid-market businesses (entrepreneur-led, scaling fast) seeking debt financing from £1m to tens of millions; retail savers in the UK.
- **Mission**: “Banking should be barrier-free” – inspired by the founders’ own frustrations with traditional lending, OakNorth aims to back proven businesses with fast, data-driven credit decisions.

## Products & Services
- **Business Loans**: Flexible, structured debt financing from £1m to tens of millions for growth capital, acquisitions, management buyouts, and property development/investment.
- **Business Banking**: Digital account with dedicated support, seamless payments and cash management for scaling businesses.
- **Personal Savings**: FSCS-protected savings accounts (up to £120,000) with competitive interest rates, offered via a digital platform.
- **OakNorth Credit Intelligence (OCI)**: Data-driven technology platform that gives lenders a forward-looking view for agile credit decisions (used internally and sold to other institutions).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed (private company)
- **Key Metric**: Cumulative lending of over £15.1bn since inception (2025). Annual profit of £165.2m in 2025. Total capital ratio of 18.4%.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Founded and led by Rishi Khosla & Joel Perlman; backed by a range of institutional investors (details not fully public). Over 400,000 retail savers provide deposit funding. Partnered with LSE Generate for mentorship.
- **Growth Signals**: Named **Best Bank in the UK** at The Banker’s Bank of the Year Awards 2025. Recognised by CNBC/Statista as one of the UK’s Top 250 Fintechs. Expanded lending into the US in 2023. Built a diversified business including Business Banking capability. 61,000+ jobs and 36,000+ new homes created through lending. Offices in London, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, Newcastle, Birmingham, New York (OCI), and India (Gurugram, Bengaluru, Hyderabad).

## Competitive Advantages
- **Data-driven credit underwriting**: Uses proprietary analytics (OCI) to assess future potential, not just past financials, enabling faster, more accurate lending decisions.
- **Founder-led, flat organisational structure**: Decision-making is fast, with less bureaucracy than traditional banks.
- **Disciplined profitability**: One of the few digital banks globally to be consistently profitable, with extremely low credit losses (4.5 basis points of cumulative facilities).
- **Customer obsession**: High NPS and a culture of “customer delight” rather than mere satisfaction.

## Strategic Focus
- **US expansion**: Scaling lending in the US lower mid-market where a similar structural gap exists.
- **Business Banking rollout**: Building a full business banking capability beyond loans to deepen customer relationships.
- **Technology and data**: Continuing to invest in the OakNorth Credit Intelligence platform and automation.
- **ESG and community**: Net zero target by 2045; 1+1% initiative (1% of profits and 1% of employee time to charity).
- **Talent and culture**: Expanding teams across UK, US, and India while maintaining a founder-led, high-autonomy culture.

## Why Work Here
- **Equity**: Employees receive equity in the business, sharing in growth.
- **Flat structure**: Opportunity to interact with senior leaders and have real impact regardless of tenure.
- **Autonomy**: Personal goal-setting with manager support; freedom to take on projects of interest.
- **Mission-driven**: Directly contribute to creating jobs, homes, and supporting ambitious entrepreneurs.
- **Culture**: Values include “Say it how it is” (honest communication), “10x” (set ambitious goals), “One team”, and “Momentum”.
- **Hybrid/Office**: Multiple office locations across UK (London, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, Newcastle, Birmingham) plus New York and India. Specific remote policies not detailed but likely hybrid for most roles.
- **Recognition**: Work for a bank that has won “Best Bank in the UK” and is seen as a top fintech employer.

## Sources
1. [OakNorth.co.uk – Home](https://oaknorth.co.uk/)
2. [OakNorth.co.uk – About/Our Story](https://oaknorth.co.uk/about/)
3. [OakNorth.co.uk – Careers](https://oaknorth.co.uk/about/careers/)
4. [OakNorth.co.uk – Annual Report 2025 (PDF)](https://oaknorth.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Annual_Report_2025.pdf)
5. [OakNorth.co.uk – Jobs](https://oaknorth.co.uk/jobs/)

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