Principal Talent Acquisition Partner

Build a career powered by innovations that matter!  At Novanta, our innovations power technology products that are transforming healthcare and advanced manufacturing—improving productivity, enhancing people’s lives and redefining what’s possible.  We create for our global customers engineered components and sub-systems that deliver extreme precision and performance for a range of mission-critical applications—from minimally invasive surgery to robotics to 3D metal printing.

Novanta is one global team with over 26 offices located in The Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific.  Looking for a great place to work?  You have found it with a culture that embraces teamwork, collaboration and empowerment.  Come explore Novanta.

We are seeking a Principal Talent Acquisition Partner to join our Global Talent Acquisition team and be based in our Apex, NC site—one of Novanta’s lighthouse locations and the company’s major U.S. manufacturing hub. This is a senior, visible role for a proactive, creative, AI savvy recruiter who loves building relationships, mapping markets, hunting passive talent across competitive landscapes and enabling our managers to make the best hiring decisions.

You will manage the end‑to‑end recruiting lifecycle for roles across G&A (Corporate & Shared Services), Engineering, R&D, Supply Chain, Sales, Product Management, and Manufacturing operations. You’ll partner closely with senior management and functional leaders including HR and Finance, craft data‑driven recruiting strategies, raise the bar on assessment quality, and build pipelines that fuel Novanta’s growth—today and over the long term.

What you’ll do

• Serve as the senior recruiting advisor to multiple business segments.
• Influence talent decisions with market intelligence and insights; coach leaders on interview rigor, selection tradeoffs, and offer strategy.
• Own the market: conduct talent mapping, organization charts, and competitor research; build diverse, role ready slates from passive candidate pools.

• In partnership with our Talent Attraction Specialist, design multi‑channel sourcing: employee referrals, targeted events and meetups, professional associations/trade groups, university/technical programs, veterans and return ship pipelines, niche job boards, and community partnerships.
• Craft compelling outreach and nurture campaigns that convert top talent.
• Leverage AI tools to accelerate sourcing (semantic search, profile enrichment), draft and optimize outreach, summarize profiles, screen for foundational fit, and generate talent market analytics—while applying sound judgment and maintaining compliance.
• Use dashboards to monitor funnel health; diversity metrics, time to hire, quality of hire and other KPI’s. 
• Run a crisp, structured hiring process from intake to offer including calibrated kickoffs, interview design, rubrics, debrief facilitation, and decisive, data backed recommendations.
• Ensure a best-in-class candidate experience with timely communication, clarity of process, and respectful, inclusive interactions at every touchpoint.
• Partner with HR and business leaders to influence and deliver talent strategy that brings value to Novanta.
• Partner with Talent Attraction and Corporate Marketing/Comms to amplify Novanta’s brand—especially showcasing Apex as a flagship advanced manufacturing site.
• Lead or contribute to global TA projects (process optimization, tool pilots, interview training, diversity sourcing initiatives, and analytics).

Experience & Education

• 10+ years of full‑cycle recruiting experience, including 5+ years in‑house within a complex, multi‑site organization.
• Demonstrated success recruiting across all levels of an organization — from executive and senior leadership roles to high‑volume direct labor and skilled manufacturing positions.

• Strong command of ATS (Workday preferred), sourcing tools, advanced Boolean/semantic search, and MS Office/Office 365; comfortable with HRIS data.
• Relationship builder and trusted advisor; able to navigate ambiguity, context‑switch, and deliver results under shifting priorities.
• Demonstrated commitment to building diverse pipelines and inclusive hiring practices.
• International recruiting experience (UK, Germany, Spain and/or Czech Republic) is desirable.

Compensation:

• The salary for this role will range from $139,840 to $223,725 annually based on full-time employment. Salary offers are based on a wide range of factors including but not limited to location, relevant skills, training, experience, education, etc.
• Certain roles may be eligible for performance-based incentive compensation and/or long-term incentives. Incentives could be discretionary or non-discretionary depending on the plan.
• Novanta supports all aspects of your life’s needs. This position provides a full range of medical, financial, and other benefits to make your quality of life better.

Novanta is proud to be an equal employment opportunity and affirmative action workplace. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, military and veteran status, disability, genetics, or any other category protected by federal law or Novanta policy.

Please call +1 781-266-5700 if you need a disability accommodation for any part of the employment process.