Alex SadlerHead of TalentLondon
Head of Talent. Talent Engineer.
I’m a former engineer turned Head of Talent and talent intelligence specialist. A talent engineer, if the title matters.
I’ve built and shipped tools that didn’t exist, and I’ve placed thousands of people into roles. My last role was frontier-level growth: a blank cheque, the best talent in the world, no job postings, networks and GTM only. Zero to one, in a hypergrowth business.
Output
- 92 to 21
- days to hire, Derivco Sports
- 70 to 18
- days to hire, Sportradar
- £5m+
- agency spend removed
- 20+
- countries hired across
- 3
- bespoke builds deployed
- 140%
- of hiring manager satisfaction target, sustained two years
Countries hired across
- UK
- France
- Germany
- Spain
- Portugal
- USA
- Brazil
- South Africa
- UAE
- Japan
- Australia
- Sweden
- Norway
- Estonia
- Latvia
- Canada
- Ireland
- Belgium
- Switzerland
- India
Among others.
Shipped Builds
SkillPoint
A free public tool built on the UK Standard Skills Classification. 1,184 occupations. Showing AI exposure and basic skill overlap.
Runs onNext.js and TypeScript, built on Skills England’s UK Standard Skills Classification and ONS open data.
skillpoint.vercel.app
SkillPoint Graph
An interactive system map and configurator. Every part of a venture as a node, every relationship as an edge, with live ROI modelling.
Runs onNext.js and TypeScript, force-directed rendering, ROI modelling in the browser.
Live build · access on request
This site
Built the same way.
Runs onNext.js and TypeScript, built in Claude Code. Gravity physics adapted from Rare UI. Globe by cobe.
The Grid
Founder, SkillPoint Global Foundation
Career intelligence infrastructure held by a charitable foundation.
Built the product, the data pipeline and the organisational structure. Trustee board includes a member of the House of Lords and the Chair of the Better Hiring Institute. Charity application with the Charity Commission.
Group Head of Talent, Roobet
Multinational iGaming and crypto group
- Directly sourced and hired the majority of the leadership team across every department.
- Agency dependency cut 80% in six months, saving £300k. Time to hire cut by 90 days and time to offer by 50.
0 to 1 build of talent function
Talent function designed and built from zero across 10+ companies in 20 countries, spanning engineering, AI, crypto, fintech and performance marketing, each with distinct regulatory requirements.
Workforce intelligence model
Built a BI-led workforce intelligence model covering supply and demand, forecasting, attrition and P&L scenario planning. Still the organisational standard after exit.
Head of Talent, Derivco Sports
Global technology provider
- Global hiring cycle compressed from 92 days to 21. 387 hires across five time zones with no external resourcing support.
- Managed up to 16 talent professionals plus contractors, 20+ direct reports at any one time.
- Sustained 140% of target on hiring manager satisfaction over two years.
Full transformation and rebuild
Talent function rebuilt across eight countries. 100% of agency spend eliminated, £2.4m saved over two and a half years.
ISO 27001 accreditation
Delivered ISO 27001 accreditation end to end.
Market entry, three continents
Full market entry across three continents: legal entity establishment, physical infrastructure, local compliance, in-market hiring capability.
Lead Talent Partner, Livi / Kry
Series C healthtech
- £1.6m in agency fees removed by replacing fractional agency reliance with internal capability.
- Built and structured the UK, French and Swedish talent teams.
Hypergrowth
SaaS division talent function built and launched across five countries in under twelve months.
Work from anywhere — EU-wide framework
Designed a first-principles framework letting employees work from anywhere across the EU: location strategy, multi-jurisdiction legal alignment, formal risk analysis with the security team, and full programme deployment.
People Partner, Talent, Sportradar
NASDAQ-listed sports data leader
- Built the pre-IPO senior leadership team: CIO, CTO, Head of Engineering, Head of Architecture, Head of Project Management and Director of Engineering, providing the executive infrastructure for the NASDAQ listing.
- Global time to hire reduced from 70 days to 18. 70+ direct hires in eight months, £2.8m combined salary value, £500k+ in fees avoided.
- Scaled DevOps from 1 to 14, project management from 2 to 9, engineering from 11 to 35.
Global operating model, technology and engineering
Designed and executed the global operating model for technology and engineering. Led the HRBP workstream for the global Workday implementation.
Delivery Lead, Marlin Green
Built and trained the sourcing team inside a specialist search business.
Owned EMEA delivery for senior SAP and big data roles.
Head of Recruitment UK, Acrotrend
Data analytics consultancy
First head-of-function role, reporting to the Managing Director. Full ownership of recruitment strategy, policy, budget and executive hiring. Designed the ATAP hiring framework, adopted company-wide.
Infrastructure and Technical Career
RED SAP Solutions, Wavex, Alain-Charles Publishing, MacNamara / FCE
Various roles at the start of my technical career, from trade floor support in a financial exchange to an MSP supporting global clients. This was followed by my first talent role, with RED SAP Solutions.
Advisory
- Product Advisory Council, Cluagentic AI skills platform. Advises the founding team on product direction, skills taxonomy architecture and the design of AI systems in workforce contexts.
- UK Government APPGcontributed to work on national hiring frameworks. Council member, Association of Recruitment Technology Providers (ARTP), part of the Better Hiring Institute. Announcing the industry standards in Parliament, September 2026.
Capacity
- Strategy and design
- Zero to one function builds, organisational design, strategic workforce planning, operating model design, M&A integration, international market entry.
- Intelligence and data
- BI-led workforce intelligence, supply and demand modelling, headcount forecasting, attrition and scenario modelling, people analytics.
- AI and technology
- Applied AI in workforce contexts, skills taxonomy architecture, AI-native sourcing pipelines, ATS architecture (Ashby, iCIMS, Workday, TeamTailor, HiBob and others). Builds in Next.js and TypeScript.
- Leadership
- Executive and C-suite advisory, founder partnership, finance partnership on workforce cost, distributed teams.
- Sourcing and hiring
- Direct sourcing at volume and at executive level. Market mapping, assessment design and structured interviewing. Over 3,000 hires delivered, including full leadership teams built pre-IPO, and 387 in a single engagement across five time zones with no agency support. Comfortable running the desk as well as the function.
Credentials
- SC Clearance to 2029
- Counter Terrorism Check cleared
- DBS checked
- CompTIA A+
- AIHR certifications in HR Consulting, Strategic Talent Acquisition and HR Trends and Strategies
- Claude Academy: AI Capabilities and Limitations
- Claude Academy: AI Fluency — Frameworks
- Google Generative AI Leader Certification
Personal and Volunteering
International competitor for Team England, target rifle.
Represented England four times internationally.
Co-founder of BYSA, the British Young Shooters Association, a national youth shooting charity.
Air Cadet instructor.
Speaker at international HR and talent forums.
Connect
Job titles in this space are blending. Member of the Talent Team, Talent Engineer, Head of Talent. The label matters less than the remit.
What I want is a role with enough room to use all of it: delivering exceptional people, building the systems around them, and thinking forward about what technical hiring becomes next.
AI-first, frontier tech and high-growth environments. Businesses that treat talent as infrastructure rather than a support function. Founder-led scale-ups, engineering-heavy product companies, and anywhere that needs a talent system built rather than a recruiting operation managed.
London, open to remote, hybrid or relocation