Head of People

Location: London

Salary: Up to £90k base

Hybrid: 4 days on site, Friday WFH

About the role

We are partnering with a fast-scaling beauty brand to recruit a Head of People. Reporting to the CEO, this role will lead the people function through a high-growth phase, managing ER, building the people strategy, talent systems and culture needed to scale the business from early-stage to category leader. You will be the first strategic HR lead and a hands-on people leader who can design and deliver best-in-class recruitment, performance, learning and people operations while advising the leadership team on organisational design, reward and employee experience.

Key responsibilities

• Develop and implement a scalable people strategy aligned to business goals, covering talent acquisition, onboarding, performance management, learning & development, reward and employee engagement.

• Own end-to-end talent acquisition for senior and mid-level hires: define role profiles, manage hiring processes, work with external partners and ensure a high-quality candidate experience.

• Design and embed a fit-for-growth performance framework that links role expectations, feedback, development and promotion pathways to commercial priorities.

• Build structured learning and development programmes to accelerate capability across marketing, product, commercial and operations teams; include leadership development for managers.

• Lead reward and benefits strategy, including market benchmarking, pay structures, equity plans and benefits that attract and retain top talent in a competitive market.

• Own people operations and people data: implement HR systems, ensure compliant contracts and policies, streamline onboarding and offboarding and provide people analytics to inform decision-making.

• Partner with the executive team on organisational design to create clear spans of responsibility, efficient team structures and career pathways that support rapid growth.

• Shape and steward company culture and values, designing initiatives that build inclusion, psychological safety and high-performance ways of working across distributed teams.

• Manage direct reports within the people team and work with external consultants where needed; set priorities, coach managers and ensure consistent people practices across the business.

• Ensure legal and regulatory compliance across employment practices and lead risk mitigation related to people matters.

About you

You are a strategic, pragmatic and empathetic people leader with experience scaling teams at pace in consumer or high-growth environments. You combine strong commercial awareness with hands-on delivery and are comfortable operating in a fast-moving, resource-constrained business.

You will be:

• Experienced: demonstrable experience in HR/People roles with a strong track record in employee relations, talent acquisition, organisational design and people operations - experience in consumer, beauty, retail or DTC brands is highly desirable.

• Strategic and operational: able to set people strategy and also run day-to-day HR delivery, including systems implementation and policy design.

• Thorough understanding of UK employment las and the Employment Rights Act

• Data-aware: comfortable using people metrics and dashboards to drive decisions on hiring, retention and performance.

• Builder mentality: experienced in creating repeatable processes, scalable systems and documentation suited to a growing business.

• Commercially minded: understands how people investment drives revenue, product delivery and customer experience.

• Excellent communicator: able to influence at executive level and coach managers across functional teams.

• Values-led and inclusive: committed to building diverse teams and inclusive processes that support equitable career progression.

• Hands-on with HR tech: experience with HRIS, applicant tracking systems and common productivity tools; comfortable implementing new systems as the business grows.

Desirable

• Background working with founders and leadership teams during significant scale-ups.

• Experience of culture design within lifestyle, beauty or direct-to-consumer brands.

We would love to respond to every application however due to the volume of applications we receive this isn't always possible. If you have not heard within 2 weeks of applying, please assume on this occasion that your application has not been shortlisted. We may retain your CV to contact you about future employment opportunities that are being managed by The Growth Foundation Talent.

The Growth Foundation Talent is deeply committed to building a diverse & inclusive workplace and welcomes applications from all sections of the community.

About the Company

We are supporting the founder of a fast-growing beauty brand that is scaling rapidly. The business is profitable and backed by strong retail and digital channels, now entering a phase of structured growth where people strategy is a critical lever for success. This is an opportunity to shape the people function from the ground up and influence the long-term trajectory of a recognised brand.

Key areas of focus:

• Establishing scalable hiring systems and talent pipelines for product, marketing, commercial and operations.

• Creating performance and development systems that support retention and internal mobility.

• Implementing HR tech and people analytics to bring rigour to people decision-making.

• Designing reward and equity frameworks that align leadership and team incentives to growth outcomes.

• Building an inclusive, mission-aligned culture that supports creative excellence and commercial delivery.

We would love to respond to every application however due to the volume of applications we receive this isn't always possible. If you have not heard within 2 weeks of applying, please assume on this occasion that your application has not been shortlisted. We may retain your CV to contact you about future employment opportunities that are being managed by The Growth Foundation Talent.

The Growth Foundation Talent is deeply committed to building a diverse & inclusive workplace and welcomes applications from all sections of the community.