People Operations Lead
HybridLondon, England, United Kingdom
Job Summary
Own all People administration, including contracting, payroll, employee records, and daily inquiries, serving as the trusted first point of contact for staff. Design and deliver core HR initiatives such as performance reviews, onboarding, policies, employee surveys, salary grids, and compensation strategy with fresh approaches suited to a hybrid startup environment. Take ownership of difficult conversations, coaching managers through underperformance and leading exit and termination processes, while identifying and developing emerging leaders. This role reports to the COO and operates on a flexible three-day-per-week pattern, scaling up during busy hiring or policy cycles. You will build the People engine behind Bioptimus's universal AI foundation model for biology, shaping a modern, efficient People function in a fast-moving, mission-driven team.
Required Qualifications
- End-to-End Experience: You have owned these areas end to end before, with enough experience under your belt to make wise judgment calls without needing a rulebook.
- Proven on the Hard Stuff: You have personally managed underperformance and led terminations and exits, and are ready to own these from early in your tenure.
- Startup Background: You have worked in a startup or scale-up and understand how People works when resources are lean and the environment is hybrid and fast-moving.
- Ideas, Not Just Execution: You have a clear point of view on how to do performance, onboarding, compensation, and policy well, and bring modern, fit-for-purpose approaches rather than corporate defaults.
- Excellent Communicator: Careful, clear, and considered in how you communicate, especially on sensitive and difficult matters.
- The HR Face People Trust: Approachable and warm, with the personality and judgment to be the person staff and managers feel comfortable turning to, even in hard moments.
- Happy in the Detail and the Big Picture: Prepared to do the groundwork as much as the high-level thinking, and genuinely comfortable moving between the two.
- Full-Cycle Compensation: You have personally run at least one full compensation and review cycle, start to finish.
- Appetite to Grow: You want to grow the people-partnering and manager-development side over time, and to be genuinely invested in Bioptimus and its people, even in a part-time arrangement.
- Around three days per week. This is currently a part-time task most weeks.
- Some weeks will need a little more, occasionally a fourth day during busy periods such as hiring, reviews, exits, or policy work.
- Others will need a little less.
- As the company grows, the role is likely to grow in days too, with a genuine path toward a broader and more senior mandate, if this is desired.
- Well suited to someone building a portfolio career or working across a small number of companies, though we would love someone able to be genuinely invested in Bioptimus.
Desired Qualifications
- Ideally fresh approaches suited to a startup in a hybrid environment rather than playbooks lifted straight from large corporates.
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