Building and leading high-performing talent acquisition teams across geographies for Canva’s Platform Engineering and AI space, delivering 150% YOY hiring growth. My focus is on enabling collective success through a clear vision and structured processes that align with Canva’s goals.While my direct teams look after Canva's Platform and AI hiring, my impact extends to Transforming global Engineering Talent Acquisition for Growth: I lead global transformation programs to elevate Canva's Technology and Engineering specialties, designing scalable, high-impact recruitment functions that drive growth across our Engineering organization. From crafting innovative TA frameworks to implementing structured, role-based processes, my initiatives support the demands of Canva’s high-growth environment, ensuring TA not only supports but accelerates company-wide expansion in critical tech areas.Competency-Based Hiring Transformation: Recognizing the strategic needs of the business, I spearheaded a major shift within Canva's Global Engineering TA—from traditional question-based hiring to a modern, competency-based model. This transition affects more than 500 interviewers, 20 recruiters, and over 1,000 engineers worldwide, addressing a gap in our previous format by ensuring a precise role-based skill evaluation. Leading every phase from ideation to global rollout, I collaborated closely with engineering leaders to develop competencies, aligning assessments with real skill requirements. This update empowers our teams to evaluate candidates on the specific capabilities required for each role, elevating quality, diversity, and speed in hiring.Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI): Driving DEI isn’t just a goal—it’s the right thing to do. I lead initiatives to champion diversity and promote inclusion, ensuring Canva’s engineering recruitment remains both equitable and reflective of a rich, diverse talent pool.

Leading recruitment function and TA team across Platform Engineering, Data,Security and Infrastructure at Canva, hiring more than 300 top tier talent per year. Passionate about candidate experience, recruitment at scale and DEI. Creating and promoting best hiring strategies, processes and initiatives for the global talent acquisition function, helping Canva achieve its crazy big goals!Introduced Hiring Champion/Mediator program at Canva to help Global Engineering function align their hiring decisions to Canva's newly introduced Levelling and Growth framework.Introduced Strategy, Communication and Leadership interview framework to Global Engineering interview process which previously only covered craft and technical skills. Establishing reporting and data framework for Global TA. Build business aligned specialty TA partner roles which was then rolled out to Canva Globally. Set up Canva's Data, infrastructure, Quality assurance and Machine learning Recruitment functions adding more than 100 engineers YOY.

Start2Scale is a strategic Talent and People Advisory firm helping startups of all kinds redefine their people and talent functions. Advisor to the board and founder I help the company deep dives into their Client's each stage of Talent journey from Attraction to Retention and help start ups uplift their people posture.

www.indigoz.au, Australia’s first multi brand online shopping platform featuring Indian brands and designers, promoting slow and sustainable fashion, beauty of natural fibres and supporting craft and artisans from South Asia.

Leading recruitment function for Solution Architects and Senior/Exec talent in AI/ML, IOT, Server-less, Cloud and Compute space across APAC. In mid 2019, I was appointed as a lead recruiter for leadership level, business critical recruitment project across AI/ML, IOT, Serverless, Cloud and Compute space.After successfully completion of this project, I led the recruitment function for Solution Architects across APAC for Public Sector, Commercial and Partner orgs. Leading TA function from end to end recruitment to process improvements and hiring projects covering D&I, Candiate experience, sourcing events and many more.

Leading the recruitment function for Cloud Engineering business for AWS ANZ from late 2016 to early 2019 - I also contributed towards building teams across DevOps, Infrastructure and Research Science from scratch. Working with senior stakeholders, to lead, plan and execute best in class hiring strategies and TA programs including but not limited to International hiring events, process improvements, diversity hiring and candidate experience. I single handedly built the cloud engineering team from 180 engineers to 470 in less than 2 years. In 2018-19, to meet AWS’s growing need for volume hiring, I created and led the Engineering Learning Series, a unique initiative based on the principle that while technical skills can be taught, key behavioral traits—embodied in Amazon’s "Leadership Principles" (LPs)—are crucial to long-term success. This program aimed to identify the "potential" in individuals who demonstrated Amazon's LPs over traditional technical qualifications.Focusing initially on the Cloud Support Engineering role, the program offered multi-day workshops covering AWS services and products to qualified participants. Those who excelled in both scores and LP demonstration were invited to participate in a tailored final interview for this program. This initiative became a major success, delivering workshops that not only introduced AWS products to a broader audience but also boosted the overall hiring rate by up to 40% over regular ANZ recruitment numbers.The program’s success led to its global adoption across AWS Support sites and later expanded to include other job profiles, highlighting the potential of skills-based hiring to drive growth and strengthen customer engagement.Later in 2019 I led a team of sourcers and recruiters, Provided thought leadership in implementing unique hiring practices across the business. Some of these programs are still being adopted globally within AWS.

Infopeople is an IT recruitment specialist, helping companies to increase profits by securing the best permanent, contract, temporary and executive IT people. We work with organisations to achieve a step change in business performance, by ensuring the right IT people are in the right roles.As a part of a result oriented team, managing 360 degree - end to end Recruitment. Helping companies to build their entire Data Science / 'Big Data' teams ranging in size from multinationals to some of the hottest start-ups in Australia.If you are looking for awesome talent in this space Or If your area of expertise is any of the below, please get in touch for exciting opportunities and to hire top talent for your team:♦ Data Scientists♦ Big Data Engineers♦ Functional programmers / Scala / Haskell Developers♦ R / Python programmer♦ Software Engineer / Developer♦ Teradata developer / Consultant♦ Data Modeller♦ Data AnalystHave a look at all our current openings on www.Infopeople.com.au OR Just tell us what you are looking for and we will FIND it for you!! Not ready to move?? No Worries.. just call us to find out what's in the Market.. Give me a call on 02 8227 4510 or write an email to hshaikh@infopeople.com.au to start exploring new Opportunities...

• Handling 360 degree recruitment focusing IT, Engineering and Construction industries.

• Working closely with the Managing Director & Head Talent Acquisition on Workforce Planning, Organizational structure and development.• Managing Full Cycle of Recruitment for Highly Technical Engineers and Top Management positions for Power, Construction, IT and infrastructure - Workforce planning, Sourcing, Scheduling, Taking Interviews, Offer making; negotiation and Closures, Pre Joining Formalities, Joining and Post joining requirements.• Designing and execution of recruitment strategies & Hiring Campaigns with innovative Ideas and out of box practices. Helping recruitment teams located across the nation and assisting them to meet their own recruitment targets.• Front ending all communication on behalf of the entire recruitment team. Interacting with Hiring Agencies & Consultants, Developing new collaborations with Hiring Agencies.