Head of People

Job description

ABOUT POSH We are all social creatures, but the dominant “social” companies today have evolved into digital loneliness machines, driving isolation, anxiety, and mental health challenges around the world. Human connection is lost. Posh is a beacon guiding us back. Posh enables anyone to build an IRL community based on shared interests, while connecting consumers with the communities of people just like them. Founded by event organizers who were frustrated with the growing loneliness epidemic and the tools available to build their own event brand, we’ve built the ultimate platform for launching, monetizing, and finding IRL communities of people just like you. In just 6 years, Posh has grown to a team of 70, expanded to 8M+ users, secured $70m in venture funding, and facilitated over $350M in transactions. ABOUT THE ROLE As our Head of People, you will own the entire people function — People Operations, Culture, and Talent — and with it the full arc of every teammate's experience: how they're found, how they're hired, how they ramp, how they grow, and the environment they do the best work of their careers in. You will shape a culture that pairs an extremely high performance bar with the trust, values, and stability that empowers great people to do exactly that. This is a true player-coach role reporting directly to the CEO, leading a team of 2: our Director of Talent (who runs recruiting, with a Talent Lead reporting to him) and our Culture Lead. You will set the strategy that ties People, Culture, and Talent together into one system — a single talent bar from first outreach through every promotion and exit decision — while personally owning the operational machinery underneath it: performance management, employee relations, compensation and benefits, payroll, compliance, and the policies and agreements that keep a fast-scaling NY-headquartered company running cleanly. You're joining at a pivotal moment. We're eager to build a world class team and the leaders we hire now will set the foundation for the organization we become. For the right person, this role has a clear path to VP of People as the company grows. This role is strictly in-person 5 days a week at our SoHo, NYC headquarters. Relocation bonuses are available for out-of-state candidates. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN & ACHIEVE CULTURE & ORGANIZATION - Own company culture as a system, not a slogan: design and run the rituals, programs, recognition, and internal communications that make Posh's Core Values come to life in the day-to-day. - Build a culture of excitement alongside a high performance bar — where feedback is direct and constructive, people feel safe to surface problems early, and hard decisions are communicated with clarity and humanity. - Own team sentiment end-to-end: engagement surveys, leadership reviews, and pulse checks — and turn what you hear into visible action the team can feel. - Design and implement a best-in-class performance management system, including clear expectations from day one, career ladders, structured review cycles, and a fair, consistent performance improvement process. - Coach managers and senior leaders on feedback delivery, communication, and team health; act as a trusted, confidential advisor to employees at every level. - Own onboarding and offboarding as cultural moments — ensuring new hires ramp with clarity and departures are handled with dignity, consistency, and clear communication to the team. - Guide our Culture Lead (your direct report) on the team-building programming, off-sites, and internal events that make an in-person company worth showing up for. TALENT - Own the talent strategy end-to-end with our Director of Talent (your direct report): a single, documented system covering the talent bar and how we protect it, role ownership between hiring managers and Talent, how we source world-class folks, optimized interview loops, and candidate scoring — so every hire raises the bar. - Ensure culture is embedded in every hiring decision: a dedicated culture interview in every loop, scorecards tied to our Culture Rubric, and every interviewer empowered to block a hire on culture. - Collaborate with leadership on headcount planning and org design that maximizes talent density in line with company goals — including the prioritized role sequencing and recruiting capacity to absorb our next stage of growth. - Iterate on compensation strategy: leveling, benchmarking against top-of-market data, equity education, and benefits packages that stay competitive with the best companies in tech. - Build the employer brand that makes A+ people seek us out — and the candidate experience that closes them. PEOPLE OPERATIONS & COMPLIANCE - Own day-to-day people operations yourself: payroll, benefits administration, HRIS, PTO, leaves of absence, and workers' compensation. Given we are only 70 people, this should not take too much of your time, but we will hire an HRBP as soon as the needs become real. - Collaborate with our counsel to draft, manage, and maintain employment agreements, offer letters, severance agreements, and company policies. - Ensure full compliance with NY State and NYC employment law, as well as federal and multi-state requirements as we grow. - Handle sensitive employee relations matters with empathy, confidentiality, sound judgment, and rigorous documentation. WHO YOU ARE - You believe in the importance of real-world human connection and are passionate about our mission to help the world connect more meaningfully in real life. - You have 10+ years of passionate People/HR experience at high-growth technology companies, including experience as the senior-most people leader (or #2) at a company scaling from ~50 to 200+ employees. - You have led leaders — you've managed managers across at least two of People Ops, Talent, and Culture, and you know how to set strategy for functions you aren't personally executing every day. - You are genuinely dual-threat: you hold strong, battle-earned opinions on culture AND you have personally owned the unglamorous operational core of HR — payroll, benefits, employment and severance agreements, compliance, and employee relations. You don't need an HRBP underneath you to function. - You understand recruiting deeply enough to lead it — you've owned or closely partnered on talent acquisition at scale, and you hold a strong point of view on what a world-class hiring bar and process look like, even though your Director of Talent runs the machine day-to-day. - You have deep working knowledge of New York State and NYC employment law and experience partnering with employment counsel. - You have a strong viewpoint on what makes a high-performing company culture. Target companies we've sculpted our culture to resemble include Airbnb, Netflix, DoorDash, Uber, Coinbase, Toast, Square, and Ramp. - You have designed and implemented performance management frameworks, career ladders, and performance improvement processes that raised the bar while building trust. - You have earned a reputation as a trusted team resource: employees confide in you because your confidentiality and judgment are beyond question. - You can effectively drive decision-making at all levels of the organization and are unafraid to respectfully challenge the CEO and leadership team when the culture demands it. - You have an intense interest in organizational psychology and a track record of turning low-morale moments into high-trust, high-performance chapters. - You have an entrepreneurial mindset and are willing to roll up your sleeves to get the job done. - You are a strategic and analytical thinker with strong communication skills, and you lead with data while delivering with soul. Posh provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training. Posh is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities in our job application procedures. Please let us know if you need assistance or accommodation due to a disability