Head of People

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a team of seven across total rewards, recruiting, and HR business partnership.
• Set annual strategy and goals for People Operations and track progress against them.
• Partner with research and engineering leadership to ensure People programs fit technical teams' needs.
• Own organization-wide people programs, including performance management, employee relations, and engagement.
• Partner with leadership on organizational design and workforce planning.
• Ensure employment-law compliance and manage risk across the employee lifecycle.
• Build documented systems and processes to address inconsistencies and ambiguity.
• Own budget and resourcing decisions for the People function.
• Partner with Finance and Legal on compliance and infrastructure needs.
• Support executive transitions, including search processes and onboarding planning.
• Own hiring execution, from defining open roles through onboarding.
• Identify opportunities to use automation and AI tools in People workflows.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree.
• 15+ years of progressive HR experience.
• 5+ years managing managers or senior individual contributors, with at least 3 direct reports.
• Experience working closely with technical teams.
• Functional depth across compensation and benefits, recruiting, and HR business partnership.
• Experience with employee relations, performance management, and organizational design.
• Experience building and documenting HR processes and systems.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to collaborate across Legal, Finance, and executive leadership.
• Experience leading a team through organizational change.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience partnering with AI research teams.
• Experience at a research institute, nonprofit, or grant-funded organization.
• Experience applying AI tools to HR workflows.
• SHRM, SPHR, or PHR certification.
• Experience at a company scaling through a leadership transition.

Compensation

• Base salary: $172,080 - $258,120.
• Generous bonus plans are also available as part of the compensation package.

Work Environment

• This role is expected to work from the Seattle office.
• The position requires remaining stationary for long periods, communicating and exchanging accurate information, observing details at close range, and working under deadlines.