People Lead

About the role

We’re looking for our first senior People leader to build the people systems and operating cadence that help Vannevar scale with speed, clarity, and high standards. This is not a traditional People role. You will be a business operator responsible for ensuring our talent, management practices, and people infrastructure directly support company execution.

You’ll partner closely with executive team and managers on the organizational decisions that matter most: hiring and retaining exceptional talent, improving manager effectiveness, strengthening performance management, planning for growth, and ensuring we have the right people in the right roles as the business scales. You’ll help leaders make clear, timely decisions on performance, compensation, promotions, retention, and exits.

At the same time, you’ll own the operational foundation that allows the company to grow confidently: benefits, compliance, investigations, employee relations, policies, and core people processes. Your job is to build lightweight, durable systems that improve business performance without slowing the company down.

What you’ll do

Build a high-performance organization

• Partner with exec team and functional leaders on org design, workforce planning, and leadership needs as the company scales.
• Clarify hiring standards, promotion expectations, and talent bar across teams.
• Design and evolve our performance management philosophy.
• Coach managers to set clear expectations, give direct feedback and have hard conversations with confidence, and address issues early.
• Build manager habits and operating cadences that reinforce high standards without adding unnecessary process.
• Partner with leadership on compensation, promotions, and retention for top performers.

Build operational excellence

• Own benefits, payroll coordination, compliance, and core people operations.
• Ensure employment practices scale cleanly across a growing company.
• Partner with legal counsel on investigations, employment matters, and policy development.
• Build lightweight systems that make the company run better, not slower.

What we’re looking for

• Has helped scale a high-performing company through rapid growth (for example, ~200 to 500+ employees).
• Has significant experience coaching managers through performance management and difficult personnel decisions.
• Has personally led employee investigations, complex offboardings, and sensitive employee relations situations.
• Knows when to introduce process and when not to.
• Is trusted by both executives and individual contributors.
• Has exceptional judgment, discretion, and emotional intelligence.
• Cares deeply about building a culture of high performance rather than avoiding hard conversations.
• Can move comfortably between strategic discussions with leadership and hands-on operational work.

What we offer

We’re proud to offer competitive benefits that support our employees. Some key highlights of our benefits package include:

• Health, dental, and vision insurance
• Remote friendly with WeWork access
• Unlimited PTO, shared downtime during the federal holiday calendar, and company-wide off time at the end of each year
• 401(k) match
• Lifestyle & wellbeing stipends
• Salary top-up during military reserve duty
• Fully paid parental leave
• Child and pet care reimbursement during travel