# People Director

**Company:** [Bretton AI](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/bretton-ai)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA
**Role:** People Ops
**Salary:** $220k – $250k/yr
**Experience:** 5+ years
**Skills:** Recruiting, Talent Acquisition, compensation strategy, HRIS, Performance Management, Organizational Design, hr operations, employee onboarding, SOC 2, Rippling, Ashby, Notion
**Posted:** 2026-07-21

> First People hire at Series B AI fintech company. Build and own full people function including recruiting, compensation frameworks, performance processes, HR ops, culture programs, and infrastructure from scratch. Hands-on builder with 5+ years high-growth startup HR experience who will partner with leadership on talent strategy.

## Job Description

## What You’ll Do

### People Strategy
- Be a thought partner to the C Suite and Leadership Team on the people calls that matter at this stage.
- Translate company strategy and growth plans into a clear People roadmap.
- Partner on organizational design, headcount planning, leveling, and talent decisions.
- Embed AI tools and agents sensibly across hiring, onboarding, performance, and people ops where relevant, using AI to generate efficiencies and help us move faster.

### Recruiting & Talent
- Own our talent acquisition strategy end-to-end: deciding whether to use vendors, process design, candidate experience, and closing.
- Partner with hiring managers to define roles, build structured interview processes, and make fast, high-quality hiring decisions.
- Utilize the Leadership Team to build the employer brand and talent pipeline that lets us compete for exceptional people against larger, better-known companies.

### Performance & Development
- Build a manager training program consistent with our size of business and speed of execution.
- Design and run our performance cycle: goal setting, reviews, calibration, leveling and career frameworks.
- Coach managers on performance management, PIPs, and difficult conversations, aligned to our values.

### Compensation & Benefits
- Design and lead our compensation strategy, including leveling, equity best practices, and total rewards that are fair, transparent, and defensible as we grow.
- Review and update our benefits package and communicate changes clearly to the team.

### People Operations & HR Infrastructure
- Own HRIS, payroll, employee data, handbook, and policies; make build/buy/PEO calls on our people stack.
- Own HR operations: onboarding/offboarding, employee records and compliance (including SOC 2-aligned offboarding).
- Stand up or improve the tools and systems that underpin People ops (HRIS, ATS, handbook tooling, etc.).

### Culture & Employee Experience
- Design and run our team rhythms: All Hands (in-person and remote), quarterly events, and our annual offsite.
- Continue to develop how we make remote employees feel embedded as part of the team, including office AV infrastructure and the appropriate regular team rhythms.
- Be the connective tissue between leadership and the team, surfacing what people need and helping the company respond well.
- Own the Employee Handbook and keep it alive: policies people can actually find, understand, and trust.

## What We’re Looking For

### Must-Haves
- 5+ years in People/HR roles at a high-growth startup (Series B+).
- Recruitment experience - you’ve personally sourced and closed hard-to-fill roles and you know what good hiring looks like in practice.
- Proven experience building People infrastructure from scratch: comp frameworks, onboarding programs, policies, handbooks.
- Operationally sharp: you can design a process, document it, implement it, and make it stick without a team behind you.
- High EQ and sound judgment - people trust you with hard things.
- Based in San Francisco (or willingness to relocate).

### Bonus Points
- Experience in fintech, regtech, or other compliance-adjacent environments.
- Familiarity with SOC 2 requirements as they relate to HR ops and offboarding.
- Experience running distributed team programs like remote All Hands and offsites.
- Comfort with tools like Rippling, Ashby, Notion, or similar People/HR platforms.

## Compensation & Benefits
- Competitive base salary + meaningful equity
- Comprehensive healthcare, 401k matching, commuter benefits
- Unlimited PTO + holidays, unlimited sick days
- Flexible leave options
- Working late? We’ve got you covered with DoorDash and an Uber home

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