Director of Talent & People (Series A Cybersecurity)

Director of Talent & People Operations - San Francisco Bay Area (Hybrid) or anywhere US Remote
The Role
We're looking for a Director of Talent & People Operations to own how our client attracts, hires, develops, and retains exceptional people as we enter our next stage of growth. You'll take over the Talent and People foundation currently managed by our Head of Operations including recruiting, HRIS, payroll, benefits, and employee operations and build the strategy and systems we need as the company scales.
You'll own recruiting across Engineering, Product, Sales, and Marketing, alongside workforce planning, People Operations, performance, manager enablement, employee experience, and culture. This is a hands-on builder role: you'll develop the strategy while still running critical searches, closing candidates, coaching managers, solving People issues, and building the processes that help grow without lowering our talent bar or adding unnecessary bureaucracy.
What you'll own:
Talent Strategy & Recruiting
● Own company-wide talent strategy and translate headcount plans into proactive hiring
strategies across technical and GTM functions.
● Build a recruiting engine that supports rapid growth while maintaining an exceptional
talent bar.
● Personally lead critical senior, technical, executive, and difficult-to-fill searches.
● Build strong outbound sourcing capabilities and determine where agencies and external
partners can add leverage.
● Partner with hiring managers on role definition, calibration, interview design, candidate
evaluation, and closing.
Recruiting Operations
● Own recruiting infrastructure including the ATS, scheduling, interview processes, offers,
reporting, and agency management.
● Build scalable hiring processes, interviewer training, and operating rhythms that improve
velocity, candidate experience, and quality of hire.
● Track pipeline health, funnel conversion, sourcing effectiveness, time-to-hire, and hiring
outcomes.
People Operations
● Own HRIS, payroll, benefits, compliance, employee records, leave administration,
onboarding, and the employee lifecycle.
● Build scalable approaches to compensation, leveling, promotions, performance
management, and career development.
● Continuously evolve our People systems and processes so they stay ahead of company
growth.
Culture, Managers & Employee Experience
● Partner with founders and leadership to intentionally evolve the culture while
preserving what makes the company effective today.
● Build lightweight programs around onboarding, engagement, communication,
recognition, team connection, and employee feedback.
● Coach managers on hiring, feedback, performance, development, compensation, and
difficult employee situations.
● Build practical performance and manager-development systems that create
accountability without unnecessary process.
Organizational Strategy
● Partner with founders and functional leaders on workforce planning, organizational
design, compensation, and future talent needs.
● Identify organizational gaps and talent risks before they become constraints on growth.
● Use People and recruiting data to inform decisions around hiring, retention,
organizational health, and investment.
What you bring
● Extensive experience across Talent, Recruiting, and People, with substantial experience in
high-growth technology companies.
● Firsthand experience helping a company rapidly double or triple in size and building the
Talent and People infrastructure required to support that growth.
● Deep recruiting expertise across both technical roles including Engineering and Product
and GTM roles across Sales and Marketing.
● Proven ability to build recruiting programs, People systems, processes, and operating
rhythms from an earlier stage.
● Strong hands-on recruiting ability: you're still comfortable sourcing, running searches,
interviewing, and closing difficult candidates.
● Strong People Operations fundamentals across HRIS, payroll, benefits, compensation,
compliance, onboarding, performance, and the employee lifecycle.
● Experience shaping culture and employee experience through a period of significant
company growth.
● Strong judgment and experience partnering directly with founders and leaders on
organizational design, talent planning, compensation, performance, and sensitive People
issues.
● Highly operational and data-driven, with the ability to move constantly between strategy
and execution while introducing structure without bureaucracy.
Nice to have
● Experience joining a company around 20–50 employees and helping scale it through
100+.
● Experience building an internal recruiting function that previously relied heavily on
agencies.
● Experience recruiting deeply technical infrastructure, distributed systems, database, or
security engineers.
● Experience building compensation, leveling, or manager-development frameworks.

Work arrangement
No