Total Rewards Director

The Role

At Peregrine, we are building the machinery for an incredible journey and are looking for a Sr Director, Total Rewards to help us architect, build and lead the team and infrastructure that supports our people through every phase of growth. This role owns compensation, benefits, people operations, HR systems, and workforce analytics—and most importantly, shapes how we think about the employee experience as a strategic lever for building a world-class company.

This is both a build and lead role. You'll be designing the scaffolding: designing the job architecture, articulating the compensation philosophy, crafting leveling frameworks, benefits programs, systems, and processes that will support us as we quickly transition from hundreds of employees to several thousand. You'll also build the team of experts who will own these domains alongside you.

The right person has done this before—built Total Rewards infrastructure, at this size through rapid growth—and has also operated in larger organizations where they've seen what mature, exceptional programs look like. You know what good looks like at scale, and you know how to build it at various stages.

What You'll Do

Architect the strategy. Partner with leadership to define how we attract, reward, and retain the people who will build this company. Articulate the total rewards philosophy that balances market competitiveness with Peregrine's growth trajectory—one that evolves as we scale and helps us become a talent magnet across engineering, product, go-to-market, and G&A. Be the expert in the room on how compensation, benefits, and equity work together to drive the outcomes we need.

Build for scale. Design the infrastructure—systems, processes, frameworks, and team—that will support growth from 350 to 1,200+ global employees without becoming a bottleneck. It’s not just solving today's problems; it’s anticipating what breaks at 2x and 4x our current size and building ahead of it. Every decision should make the next phase of growth easier, not harder.

Create operational excellence. Establish the workflows, service standards, and integration points that let the People function operate with precision and speed. Managers should be able to make compensation decisions confidently. Employees should experience seamless lifecycle processes. Data should flow cleanly across systems. The goal is a function that runs so well and integrated that it is an accelerator to the business and a competitive advantage for the company.

Ground the work in culture. Peregrine's mission attracts a certain kind of person. Our rewards programs should reflect who we are and reinforce what we value—not just check competitive boxes. Benefits and programs should be designed to create genuine engagement and signal what it means to work here.

Turn data into insight. Build the analytics capability that helps leadership understand workforce health and make better decisions. This means dashboards and scorecards, yes—but more importantly, it means surfacing the insights that matter before anyone asks for them. Create visibility into compensation competitiveness, retention risk, and the leading indicators that predict where we're headed.

Partner at the leadership level. Serve as a strategic partner to the executive team on all things related to how we invest in people. Contribute to board materials and executive compensation discussions. Influence how leadership thinks about talent as a strategic asset—bringing data, market perspective, and a clear point of view.

Build and lead a team of experts. Hire and develop specialists across compensation, benefits, people operations, and HR systems. Create a high-performing team known for excellence and partnership—one that others across the company want to work with.

About You

• 10+ years of progressive experience in total rewards, compensation, or HR leadership, with at least 5 years in senior leadership roles
• Experience building Total Rewards infrastructure through significant growth—ideally in technology or high-growth environments
• Deep expertise in compensation strategy, including equity compensation, job architecture, and market benchmarking
• Strong command of HR systems and data infrastructure; experience leading system implementations
• Experience designing and scaling people operations functions
• Demonstrated ability to balance strategic thinking with operational excellence—you can design the vision and also make the spreadsheet work
• Credibility to partner with executives and boards on compensation matters
• A builder mindset: you're energized by creating something from the ground up, not just optimizing what exists
• Comfort with ambiguity and a bias toward sustainable systems over quick fixes, and knowing when to use which.
• Located in San Francisco and open to working in office