Senior People Partner - Manufacturing

About the Company

We are a renewable energy and ocean technology company committed to rapidly developing and deploying technologies that will ensure a sustainable future for Earth by unlocking the vast energy potential of its oceans. Our focus is on capturing civilizational levels of ultra-low-cost renewable energy for applications including computing and affordable renewable fuels delivered to shore.

The company is a public benefit corporation headquartered in Portland, Oregon, and backed by leading venture capitalists, philanthropic investors, university endowments, and private investment offices. We operate as an idea meritocracy in which the best ideas change the company’s direction on a regular basis.

Our staff have worked at organizations such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, Boeing, Tesla, Apple, Virgin Orbit, Astra, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, New Relic, Bridgewater, Raytheon, Disney Imagineering, and the US Army and Air Force, as well as research universities, startups, and small companies across a range of industries.

About the Job

Our core technology is the node, a device that produces energy in the ocean’s harshest conditions for years at a time without human maintenance or intervention. Building it takes a manufacturing organization growing quickly across three Portland-area worksites. That growth is why this role exists.

As our first People Partner, you will work closely with our Vice President of Manufacturing and leaders across Manufacturing Engineering, Production, and Supply Chain. This is a senior individual contributor role with substantial independence, supporting hourly employees, salaried employees, and contractors across three worksites. You will also help establish how this work is done at Panthalassa with the Vice President of Talent and People Operations.

You will help leaders make better decisions about their teams, build the organization we need, and work through difficult people issues with sound judgment. Your work will move between workforce planning, organizational design, manager coaching, and sensitive employee matters. You will need to learn how manufacturing works while keeping the broader company in view.

Our approach to this work starts with understanding the business and the people doing it. We earn influence through trust, credibility, and useful advice. We expect managers to lead their teams, and we help them get better at it. Policies and processes have a purpose, but they do not replace judgment.

We are looking for someone who is direct, approachable, and steady when things get messy, and who knows when an approach from a past company should be left behind. Someone who can challenge a leader without making it a contest, take a concern seriously without escalating the temperature, and bring a sense of humor without losing sight of the stakes.

Candidates should have strong interpersonal skills and be able to thrive in a creative, scrappy, and collaborative environment in which the best ideas change the company’s direction on a regular basis.

What Success Looks Like

• Manufacturing leaders seek your perspective because you understand their work and help them make better decisions.
• Managers handle feedback, performance, and team issues themselves, earlier and with greater confidence.
• Employees on every shift trust you to listen, give them a straight answer, and follow through—even when the answer is not what they hoped for.
• Manufacturing worksites stay connected to HQ and the broader company. You help information move in both directions, bring site perspectives into company decisions, and address gaps in communication and coordination.
• The practices you build are simple enough that people actually use them.

Responsibilities

• Spend real time on the production floor at all three sites. Learn how Manufacturing Engineering, Production, and Supply Chain work, and keep information moving between the sites and HQ.
• Partner with the Vice President of Manufacturing and manufacturing leaders on team structure, leadership capacity, and role clarity, weighing effects on other teams and sites.
• Help leaders plan for the work ahead: whether to hire, move people, use contractors, or reorganize. Partner with Talent Acquisition on hiring, and lead the people side of site expansions.
• Build the manufacturing portion of our job families, levels, and career paths, and coach managers to use them in hiring, development, and promotion.
• Coach managers, including new ones as we add leadership layers, to set clear expectations, give useful feedback, address performance early, and develop their people. In hard situations, guide them without taking over—the team stays theirs.
• Handle complex employee matters, including conflict, accommodations, investigations, and exits, with care and proportion. Most issues need a conversation or a change in how we work; few need formal action.
• Give direct advice, including when you disagree. Explain your reasoning, listen to other perspectives, and help people reach a workable decision.
• Bring organizational patterns and risks to the Vice President of Talent and People Operations with a clear recommendation.
• Build processes only where they solve a real problem, and retire them when they stop serving the organization.

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of progressive experience in HR or People Partner roles, including substantial independent partnership with senior leaders.
• Experience supporting hourly employees, salaried employees, and contractors across multiple worksites, with credibility on the production floor as well as in the office.
• Experience helping a fast-growing or changing organization make decisions about structure, workforce needs, and leadership capacity.
• Strong manager-coaching skills, with examples of helping managers improve how they lead rather than taking over their responsibilities.
• Sound judgment on complex employee matters and employment law, including knowing when to involve legal counsel.
• Demonstrated ability to earn trust and influence decisions without reporting authority, including challenging senior leaders while remaining a credible partner.
• Clear communication, discretion, and steady judgment under pressure, and comfort working through ambiguity without a fully built process.

Desired Qualifications

• Experience supporting manufacturing or another technically complex, shift-based organization, ideally including opening or expanding a worksite.
• Experience in a high-growth startup where you helped build the organization and adapted your approach as it grew.

The above qualifications are desired, not required. We encourage you to apply if you are a strong candidate with only some of the desired skills and experience listed.

Additional Requirements

• Travel to vendors and test sites as needed
• Intermittently able to work longer hours and weekends to support critical needs. While we expect a lot of each other, we also offer a high degree of autonomy and work-life balance, including flexible PTO and flexible working hours.

Compensation and Benefits

If hired for this full-time role, you will receive:

• Cash compensation of $150,000 - $195,000
• Equity in the company. We’re all owners and if we’re successful, this equity should be far and away the most valuable component of your compensation.
• A benefits package that helps you take care of yourself and your family, including:
  • Flexible paid time off
  • Health insurance (the company pays 100% of gold-level PPO plan for full-time employees, their partners, and dependents)
  • Dental insurance (the company pays 100% for full-time employees, their partners, and dependents)
  • Vision insurance (the company pays 100% for full-time employees, their partners, and dependents)
  • Disability insurance (the company pays 100% for a policy to provide long-term financial support if you become disabled)
  • Ability to contribute to tax-advantaged accounts, including 401(k), health FSA, and dependent care FSA
• Relocation assistance to facilitate your move to Portland (if needed).

Location

Our offices, lab, shop, and manufacturing worksites are located in the Greater Portland, Oregon area. This role is expected to work regularly onsite and travel between worksites on a weekly basis.