HR Generalist & Employee Relations·Updated on Nov 13·
Full-timeParis, FranceNo salary listedIn-person
About the Job
Requirements
Built and scaled a People function from scratch or through a major inflection point, including structuring the team, operating model, and priorities.
Partnered directly with founders or executives in high-intensity contexts and handled sensitive decisions such as organizational changes, underperformance, leadership transitions, and restructurings with rigor and pace.
Operated across multiple countries in Europe and/or the United States, balancing global principles with local compliance and execution realities.
Demonstrated a low-bureaucracy approach by quickly shipping minimum-viable People processes, iterating based on feedback, and reducing risk while protecting business agility.
Hands-on experience with employee relations, such as CSE or Works Council matters, and labor law, including France.
Natural authority and assertiveness without being rigid or dogmatic.
Fluency in English is required.
Responsibilities
Partner with founders on People, organizational design, and leadership topics.
Bring structure and perspective to people decisions as the company scales.
Create a pragmatic People operating rhythm covering cadence, prioritization, leadership alignment, and communication.
Challenge assumptions in the interest of the company's long-term health.
Translate business priorities into a clear 6–12-month HR roadmap and execute it quickly.
Own talent acquisition strategy and delivery end-to-end, including workforce planning, role definition, sourcing strategy, interview design, hiring-manager enablement, and offer approach.
Personally drive critical hires and raise hiring standards while maintaining speed.
Build scalable recruiting infrastructure, including tools, playbooks, metrics, and partner management.
Coach leaders on hiring discipline and set measures of success, including quality, time-to-hire, and funnel health.
Use only the process needed to strengthen accountability and execution without slowing the company down.
Personally handle complex employee-relations matters and sensitive situations.
Conduct difficult conversations directly, balancing empathy and firmness.
Support organizational changes and transitions with clarity and calm.
Help managers grow into their roles by setting clear expectations.
Build lightweight people analytics to guide decisions on headcount, attrition, hiring velocity, and performance signals.
Improve the overall quality of people management across the company.
Model clarity, accountability, and courage in leadership.
Build and run People operations across regions, including contracts, onboarding, policies, payroll and benefits coordination, and employee experience for office and frontline populations.
Select and deploy scalable systems, including HRIS, ATS, and onboarding tools, prioritizing simplicity and adoption.
Ensure compliance and risk management across geographies, with France as the anchor.
Handle employee-relations work, including performance and disciplinary processes, conflict management, exits, sensitive cases, and coordination with external counsel or advisors.
Lead constructive social dialogue in France with CSE and employee representation.
Desired Qualifications
French language proficiency is a plus.
Upway is looking for its first Head of People, someone who will partner with the Co-founders and the rest of the leadership team to build and scale the People function. This role sits on the leadership team and participates in company-level strategic decision-making.
This role is not about building “perfect” HR systems. It is about bringing clarity, judgment, and leadership on people and organizational topics in an environment where things evolve quickly and are not always fully defined.
The Head of People role will be a highly strategic position within Upway, a founder-led scale-up, and therefore the candidate will be someone who is pacy, action orientated, pragmatic and results driven.
Partner with founders & leaders
Act as a close partner to the founders on People, org design, and leadership topics
Bring structure and perspective to people decisions as the company scales
Create a pragmatic People operating rhythm (cadence, prioritization, leadership alignment, communication)
Challenge assumptions when needed, always in the interest of the company’s long-term health
Build simple, scalable people foundations
Translate business priorities into a clear HR roadmap (6–12 months) and execute with speed.
Own the TA strategy and delivery end-to-end: workforce planning, role definition, sourcing strategy, interview design, hiring manager enablement, and offer approach.
Personally drive critical hires and raise hiring standards while maintaining speed.
Coach leaders on hiring discipline and set clear measures of success (quality, time-to-hire, funnel health).
Avoid over-engineering: bring “just enough process” to strengthen accountability and execution without slowing the company down.
Handle sensitive topics with judgment
Personally handle complex employee relations and sensitive situations
Step into difficult conversations directly, balancing empathy and firmness
Support organizational changes and transitions with clarity and calm
Enable managers and leaders
Help managers grow into their roles by setting clear expectations
Build lightweight people analytics to steer decisions (headcount, attrition, hiring velocity, performance signals).
Raise the overall quality of people management across the company
Model strong leadership behaviors: clarity, accountability, and courage
Operations, systems & employee relations
Build and run the operational backbone of People in all the regions: contracts, onboarding, policies, payroll/benefits coordination, and scalable employee experience for both office and frontline populations.
Select and deploy systems that scale (HRIS, ATS, onboarding tools) with a bias toward simplicity and adoption.
Ensure strong compliance and risk management across geographies (France as the anchor, multi-country exposure valued).
Be hands-on on employee relations: performance/disciplinary processes, conflict management, exits, sensitive cases, and partnership with external counsel/advisors.
In France, lead constructive social dialogue (CSE/employee representation) with rigor and pragmatism
What we're looking for
Built and scaled a People function from scratch or through a major inflection point (hypergrowth, international expansion, new sites/regions), including structuring the team, operating model, and priorities
Partnered directly with founders/executives in high-intensity contexts and handled sensitive decisions (org changes, underperformance, leadership transitions, restructurings when applicable) with rigor and pace
Operated across multiple countries (Europe and/or U.S.), balancing global principles with local compliance and execution realities.
Demonstrated a low-bureaucracy approach: shipped “minimum viable” People processes quickly, iterated based on feedback, and protected business agility while reducing risk.
Hands-on experience with employee relations (e.g. CSE/Works Council) and labor law (incl. France required)
Natural authority and assertiveness, without being rigid or dogmatic