Senior Director, People

The Role

You'll design the people systems and processes our company scales and thrives on: how we level and pay, how we onboard, how we grow and promote, and how we manage performance. The raw material is strong — a high-talent team, support for modern tooling, and leaders who care about performance as much as you do. You default to AI-forward thinking — using modern tools to make People processes faster, sharper, and more scalable, not just to keep up with them.

This is a builder's seat, not a maintenance role. You'll report directly to our CEO, with the mandate and autonomy to shape how Doxel hires, develops, and retains talent as we scale — and the trust to build it right the first time.

Your Day To Day

• Talent engine. Recruiting execution has dedicated owners — you make the machine around them world-class: hiring velocity, interview quality, decision discipline, and a candidate experience that closes the people we want most.
• Performance Management, Career Pathing & Manager Development. Partner with Finance on leveling architecture and benchmarking (Pave/Carta); design offer strategy. Own and evolve our career pathing framework so growth criteria at every level are clear and defensible. Run merit and promotion cycles end to end, including calibration. Directly coach and develop our people managers — especially first-time managers — through performance conversations, calibration, and promotion decisions.
• People platform (HRIS). Rippling is our HRIS and you own it: job architecture, approval workflows, onboarding that impresses on day one, offboarding that's airtight.
• Employee Relations. Be the first line on ER issues handling them with rigor in accordance with company policies, while coaching managers through difficult situations before they escalate.
• Benefits, total rewards & employee support. Own benefits strategy and annual renewals with our broker, 401(k) administration, and payroll operations across [confirm: two countries, or more — flagging the discrepancy with the "11+ countries" line elsewhere]. Make our rewards competitive, understood, and efficient. Support immigration needs (H-1B and related, with dedicated outside counsel), mobility.
• Learning & Development. We have a track record of growing up-and-coming managers into senior leaders. You will own and grow the learning & development program to scale this success.

We hire and promote on one criterion: the best person for every job. We expect our People leader to build systems that are rigorously fair and rigorously excellent, and to keep the function anchored to mission and merit.

What Success Looks Like

You're hungry to build from the ground up and partner directly with the CEO on a daily basis
You default to AI-forward thinking — using modern tools to make People processes faster, sharper, and more scalable, not just to keep up with them.
A true generalist with depth: credible on career pathing conversations comp architecture one day, an immigration case the next, an HRIS workflow redesign the day after
A player/coach. You build the model, configure the system, and run the process yourself — then systematize so it scales
Experienced with multi-entity or international operations is a big plus
Fluent in modern people tooling — Rippling or comparable HRIS; Pave/Carta
Trusted at both altitudes: executives & employees 

What You Bring

• 10+ years of blended Recruiting and HR experience
• At least 2+ years within an Enterprise SaaS environment
• Experience at a growth-stage company (roughly 50–300 headcount during tenure)
• Comfortable evaluating and integrating AI-powered tools into People workflows (e.g., interview intelligence, performance calibration support, L&D content creation) — not just using AI, but knowing where it genuinely improves rigor vs. where it doesn't
• Talent Engine: Experience building or significantly improving hiring infrastructure, with measurable and effective KPIs (time-to-fill, offer-accept rate, interviewer scorecard consistency, etc.)
• Performance Management, Career Pathing & Manager Development:
• Has run performance review/merit/promotion or calibration cycles directly, not just supported them 
• Has built or owned a career pathing framework — clear criteria for what growth looks like at each level, not just comp bands tied to titles
• Has direct experience developing first-time or early-stage people managers — coaching them through their first performance conversations, calibration debates, or promotion decisions, not just training them once and moving on
• Comfortable coaching managers through difficult performance conversations in real time
• HRIS ownership: Hands-on experience owning an HRIS (Rippling or comparable) — configuring job architecture, approval workflows, onboarding/offboarding flows — not just using one as an end user
• Employee Relations: Demonstrated experience handling ER issues directly — investigations, terminations, conflict escalation, manager coaching

Preferred Experience

Compensation & benchmarking: Comfort constructing offers and leveling using benchmarking data (Pave, Radford, or similar; Carta for equity) — noting compensation budget currently sits with Finance, so this is closer to fluency and partnership than sole ownership today
Multi-entity/international experience: We currently operate across 11+ countries, so background in international HR operations and best practices is very helpful
Benefits & Total Rewards: Experience owning benefits strategy and running an annual renewal with a broker; familiarity with 401(k) administration and multi-country payroll operations
Immigration: Prior experience supporting or managing employer-sponsored immigration cases