Head of People Partnership

The role

This is one of the most important roles in the PhysicsX people function. The Head of People Partnership is the primary architect of how we develop, support and retain our people — and a trusted voice to the executive team on all matters of organisational health, culture and performance.

This is not a traditional HR leadership role. This role sits at the intersection of people strategy and business strategy. You will be expected to operate with full autonomy, shape how PhysicsX thinks about its organisation — not just how the people team operates — and be accountable for the performance of a significant part of the business: its people and the leaders who lead them.

You will report directly to the Chief People Officer and work as a genuine partner to the CEO, COO and functional leadership team.

What you will own

Organisational strategy & design

• Lead organisational design across PhysicsX — team structures, spans of control, role clarity and how the organisation evolves as we scale
• Serve as the primary people strategy advisor to senior leaders
• Shape PhysicsX's talent strategy and ways of working at the company level; maintain an enterprise-wide perspective that connects people, strategy and execution
• Propose and drive people strategy initiatives end-to-end; a key voice in company-level decisions

Change management & organisational effectiveness

• Lead the people dimension of organisational change — rapid headcount growth, cultural evolution, restructures and new ways of working
• Design and execute change management strategies that bring employees and managers with us through significant transitions, not just inform them of outcomes
• Identify organisational health risks early — team dynamics, leadership gaps, cultural drift — and act on them before they become business problems
• Support leaders in building change-ready teams that can operate effectively through ambiguity

Performance & development

• Own the PhysicsX performance management framework — its design, its application and its continuous improvement
• Design and lead leadership development programmes that build the capability of managers and senior leaders across the company, not just within your immediate team
• Create the conditions for a high-performing, inclusive organisation at scale — one that sustains high performance without sacrificing care
• Drive consistent and rigorous promotion and levelling calibration processes across PhysicsX, exercising independent judgment and holding the bar

Compensation, levelling & workforce planning

• Exercise independent judgment on levelling decisions, compensation equity and promotion calibrations — working closely with the CPO and Finance to ensure decisions are fair, consistent and market-informed
• Own workforce planning for your business areas — headcount modelling, attrition forecasting, skills gap analysis and scenario planning — grounded in both business need and people reality
• Partner with the Head of Talent and People Ops & Data on forward-looking capability planning, ensuring the business always has the people it needs to execute its strategy
• Provide the executive team with a clear view of organisational capability — where we are strong, where we are exposed and what we need to do about it

Employee relations & culture

• Own the most complex, sensitive and consequential employee relations matters at PhysicsX — exercising independent judgment at all times
• Shape culture by example and by holding the standard; trusted by the executive team as the authoritative voice on people and performance
• Surface patterns, risks and opportunities from across the organisation to the executive team before they become problems

Diversity, equity & inclusion

• Own the DEI agenda within your business areas — not as a separate programme but embedded in how we hire, develop, promote and retain people at PhysicsX
• Ensure levelling calibrations, performance assessments and promotion decisions are applied equitably and that bias is actively named and addressed
• Partner with the Head of Talent to embed inclusion into hiring processes from the outset
• Use people data to track diversity outcomes over time and hold the business accountable for progress

Data-driven people advisory

• Build and use a data-driven view of your business population — engagement signals, attrition risk, performance distribution, pay equity — and act on what you see
• Bring people data into leadership conversations as a matter of course, not as an occasional supplement to intuition
• Partner with People Ops & Data to ensure the metrics that matter for your business areas are tracked, visible and informing decisions

People function leadership

• Lead the People Partnership function with full ownership of outcomes
• Manage and develop a lean, high-performing team: a HRBP (US-based)
• Partner closely with the Heads of Talent, People Ops & Data, and Workplace & Employee Experience — actively using the intentional tension between functions to keep the employee experience honest and joined up

What we are looking for

Experience & background

• Significant experience as a senior HR or people leader in a high-growth technology company — ideally one where the talent bar is exceptionally high and the pace of change is relentless
• A track record of operating as a genuine strategic partner to an executive team — not just delivering what is asked, but shaping the agenda
• Deep expertise across the full people partnership remit: organisational design, performance management, employee relations, culture, leadership development, change management and workforce planning
• Proven experience designing and leading change management at scale — restructures, rapid growth phases, cultural transformation
• Strong commercial fluency — you understand how the business makes money, how it competes, and what that means for how we build and deploy our people
• Experience exercising independent judgment on levelling, compensation equity and promotion calibration decisions
• Demonstrable experience building data-driven people advisory practices — you use metrics, not just instincts
• Experience leading and developing people leaders — you have built teams before, and the people you have managed have gone on to do significant things
• Demonstrable experience navigating complex, sensitive employee matters with sound judgment, legal awareness and genuine care
• Experience working across multiple geographies is strongly preferred; solid knowledge of UK employment law is essential; familiarity with US employment law is a strong advantage