Hawkwood
Director, People Operations - Series C, Global Fintech Scale-up
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Director of People Operations
London-based, Hybrid - 3 days in office
Salary: Up to £175,000
The Opportunity:
Hawkwood is partnering with a high-growth fintech business to appoint a Director of People Operations. This company has built an impressive position within a large, complex and historically underserved area of global financial markets.
The business has experienced exceptional commercial growth, has secured significant institutional investment and has scaled from an early-stage organisation to several hundred employees globally. Today, it operates across the UK, US, APAC and LATAM, with further growth ahead.
The organisation has grown rapidly, and some of its People infrastructure has developed reactively as a result. With greater international complexity and another phase of scaling ahead, there is now an opportunity to build a significantly more sophisticated, globally consistent People Operations function.
As part of this evolution, the wider People organisation has recently moved towards a more specialised model, with dedicated leadership across People Partnering, People Operations, Talent Acquisition and Internal Communications. The Director of People Operations will own the operational backbone of that function globally.
Sitting within the senior People leadership layer, you will inherit a small but developing global team and have meaningful scope to determine how the function evolves. This includes building further capability across People Analytics, People Experience and Total Reward, alongside strengthening the core People Operations infrastructure.
What you'll do:
- Define the global People Operations strategy and roadmap, building an operating model to support the company's next phase of international growth.
- Assess the existing People Operations environment and determine what should be retained, improved, automated or rebuilt.
- Shape the future structure of the function, establishing clearer ownership and building specialist capability across People Analytics, People Experience and Total Reward.
- Lead the evolution of the People systems environment, improving data quality, reporting, and the infrastructure underpinning the wider People function.
- Build stronger People Analytics capability, creating better visibility across workforce planning, headcount forecasting and global people costs.
- Create greater operational consistency across an international organisation, determining what should be globally standardised and where local flexibility is required.
- Strengthen the infrastructure supporting international employment, compliance, mobility and employee movement between markets.
- Help shape a more sophisticated approach to compensation, benefits and Total Reward as the organisation continues to scale.
- Bring a stronger employee experience lens to People Operations, designing internal processes that are intuitive, practical and scalable.
- Explore how AI and automation can meaningfully improve the People function, reducing manual work and creating infrastructure that can support greater scale without unnecessary complexity.
- Build and develop a high-performing team, introducing new capability while establishing clear accountability and high standards.
- Partner closely with senior leadership and contribute as a visible member of the broader People leadership team.
- Balance long-term transformation with immediate execution, moving comfortably between strategic questions and hands-on operational challenges.
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You will bring:
- Significant People Operations leadership experience within a rapidly scaling organisation, ideally within the VC-based tech ecosystem.
- Curiosity around AI and automation, and how emerging technology can create a more effective and scalable People function.
- A track record of building or materially transforming a People Operations function, rather than solely operating within an already mature environment.
- Experience supporting organisations through meaningful growth, complexity and international expansion.
- Strong international exposure, ideally across several markets or regions - ideally APAC and LATAM.
- Depth across People systems, data, analytics and operational infrastructure.
- Experience across areas such as Total Reward, global mobility, benefits, employee operations and compliance.
- Evidence of building teams and introducing specialist capability as an organisation scales.
- Strong commercial judgement and the credibility to operate effectively with executive-level stakeholders.
- The ability to think strategically while remaining willing and able to get into the operational detail.
- Comfort with ambiguity, evolving priorities and making decisions without perfect information.
- A genuine appetite for the build phase: you enjoy taking fragmented or immature infrastructure and creating something significantly better.
- High standards and a strong bias towards execution, balanced with a collaborative and low-ego leadership style.
- Experience within fintech, technology or B2B SaaS would be preferable.
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This is a particularly interesting opportunity for someone who wants genuine ownership rather than incremental optimisation. You will have the opportunity to define what excellent global People Operations looks like for the business - and then build the team, systems, data, infrastructure and operating model required to deliver it.
We recognise how challenging this current job market is for candidates, and Hawkwood is therefore striving to provide the best candidate experience we can. If you are interested in this opportunity, we kindly request that you apply via this LinkedIn advert, as opposed to sending us an email or LinkedIn direct message. We are eager to ensure that each candidate application is considered fairly and receives a consistent experience. Unfortunately, we cannot ensure this standard if you inquire about a role via email or LinkedIn message, as it falls outside of our established process.
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