People Lead

About Dust

We're creating a new AI operating system that has the potential to change the way companies operate. Our mission at Dust is to transform how work gets done by letting any team and employee shape the exact agents they need to accelerate their jobs.

With 70%+ weekly active users, people stick with Dust as much as they do with Slack and Notion. We already are a core part of their jobs.

We're at an exciting stage of our journey—and growing fast. We're serving great customers like Cursor, Clay, Whatnot, and Persona, and aim to x6 our growth by the end of 2025.

Dust is a Sequoia-backed company with an experienced and determined team of optimists (coming from companies like Stripe or OpenAI) that like to focus on users, getting great things done by shipping fast, and doesn’t take itself too seriously while doing so.

As Dust's first People hire, you'll define and build the people systems and culture that enable us to scale from 80 to 200+ people while staying nimble, innovative, and AI-first.

This isn't about inheriting a playbook, we want you to reinvent what ‘people’ can be when you have a cutting-edge AI product at your fingertips. You'll use Dust daily to transform how you work, and you'll evangelize that internally and externally.

What You'll Do

1. Shaping and scaling Dust's culture

• Define what our Operating Principles mean in practice as we grow and become more distributed (Paris + US)

• Build systems that preserve what makes Dust special while evolving what needs to change

• Partner with founders on people strategy—we need someone who will spar, not just execute

• Be a vocal champion internally and externally for how we're reinventing work with AI

2. Evangelizing Dust and AI-driven People Ops

• Be public about how we're reimagining People function with AI (write, speak, create content)

• Use Dust daily to transform your own work and champion it across the company

• Build Dust's reputation as a leader in modern people practices

• Bring a strong POV on what great looks like and push the team to think differently

3. Building people infrastructure and systems

• Set up and optimize our HRIS, people tech stack, and data infrastructure

• Design performance management, leveling, compensation, and rewards frameworks that are objective, scalable, and modern

• Build onboarding, employee experience, and engagement programs

• Integrate AI thoughtfully into every process and system you design—resist over-engineering

4. Driving people data and insights

• Define and track metrics that matter (eNPS, engagement, retention, performance trends)

• Surface insights that help leadership make better decisions about people and culture

• Tie people outcomes to business goals and use data to iterate continuously

5. Ensuring operational excellence

• Streamline contracts, payroll, compliance, and administrative processes

• Stay ahead of French and US labor law requirements

• Leverage AI and modern tools to work efficiently and scale operations without adding headcount

Requirements

1. Strong POV on modern People function and how AI is transforming it

• You follow inspiring companies and leaders in People (and can name your top 3)

• You're excited to reinvent People Ops with AI, not replicate what's been done before

• You're vocal about your work—you write, speak, or create content about People topics

• You see People as a product and apply product thinking to everything you build

2. 7+ years building people systems at fast-growing startups (Series A-C)

• You've designed core people processes from scratch (onboarding, performance, comp, culture programs)

• You balance strategic thinking with hands-on execution

• You thrive in ambiguity and can operate with limited resources

3. Experience partnering with and challenging founders

• You're comfortable influencing at the leadership level without formal authority

• You can spar constructively—push back when needed without being defensive

• You translate business strategy into people systems and vice versa

4. AI-native mindset and modern tools

• You actively use AI in your day-to-day work and can articulate how it's transforming People Ops

• You're excited to use Dust daily and evangelize how it can reinvent your function

• You experiment with new tools and approaches proactively

5. Highly analytical and data-driven

• You define what people metrics matter and why, and have tracked them in past roles

• You tie people data to business outcomes

• You're proficient with HRIS systems and analytics tools

6. Experience with distributed teams across France and the US

• You understand both French and US employment contexts, working styles, and cultural norms

• You've built people systems that scale across geographies

• You're comfortable with async work and timezone coordination

Nice-to-haves:

• Deep expertise in compensation and performance frameworks

• Experience with compliance, contracts, and payroll administration

• SaaS, B2B, or AI/ML industry experience

• French language skills

Benefits & compensation:

Base salaries are just one component of the total compensation package and are determined by a number of factors such as years of experience, expertise, qualifications and more. In addition to base salary, we offer competitive equity packages that play a big part in recognizing you for the huge impact you will have on helping us achieve our mission. Please note, the salary range is a guideline that is subject to change without notice.

• Competitive compensation: €70K - €100K* base salary

• We offer substantial support for relocation, including a stipend up to €10k, finding an apartment in Paris, and supporting you with all residence and work permit-related procedures

• Significant equity package in a Sequoia-backed startup

• Health insurance for you and your dependents

• New MacBook Pro or Linux machine, monitor, keyboard, etc.

• Beautiful office in the heart of Paris

• Opportunity to travel to the US multiple times a year

• Regular team events and offsite

*We can go higher for outstanding profiles.

Location

We're prioritizing building our team with an in-person culture at our offices in Paris and San Francisco, valuing the magic that happens when talented people work closely together.

Why Dust

We're not building yet another enterprise SaaS tool. We’re creating an AI OS that will fundamentally change how companies operate. We believe existing AI models are powerful enough to have a tremendous impact on the world (and will keep getting better) – the key is building the infrastructure so that they have context and explore the best interfaces for humans to interact with them.

We have the unique opportunity to explore and shape the way humans interact with machines while working on a product we use ourselves every day.

If you're excited about crafting products that reinvent B2B software and want to join a team that combines the best of startup culture with the backing of top-tier investors, we'd love to talk.

👋 Even if you don't check every box in our requirements, we encourage you to apply. We value diverse perspectives and backgrounds, and we're more interested in your potential and passion than a perfect match to our checklist.

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Learn how we think and work.

• Our product constitution a story about our mission

• Agents at work - Latent Space, podcast with our cofounder, Stanislas Polu, 2024

• LLMs reasoning and agentic capabilities over time - dotAI, podcast with our cofounder, Stanislas Polu, 2024