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People & Talent Lead
About Us
Every business needs to know who they’re really working with—whether it’s partners, investors, suppliers, or third parties. At Xapien, we’re transforming how organisations approach this challenge by combining speed, scale, accuracy, and cutting-edge AI.
Since 2018, we’ve grown from a deep-tech startup to a globally recognised player in AI-driven due diligence and risk intelligence. Key milestones in 2024 include:
- Securing a $10M Series A funding round
- Being named in Chartis 100 and Everest Group’s 50 Leading Teams™
- Expanding products, markets, and customer base
In 2025, the demand surged as new regulations, compliance pressures, and reputation risks compel organisations to adopt smarter, faster due diligence solutions. Global clients—including law firms, private banks, universities, and charities—trust Xapien to turn days of manual research into insights delivered in minutes.
Our growth momentum
- Customers across diverse sectors: Strong growth in wealth management, financial services, and supply chain operations.
- Global expansion: Initial UK base now reaching diverse markets, including the Middle East, Asia, and Oceania.
Why Join at This Time?
This isn’t just any role—it’s an opportunity to shape the future of due diligence. Whether your expertise is in marketing, sales, finance, or another field, you’ll contribute directly to growth, credibility, and strategic positioning.
Xapien’s collaborative culture values learning, innovation, and collective impact. Spreading our network’s reach boldly to stretch from 75 people to 100+—including US-market expansion—demands agile decision-making, scalable frameworks, and entrenched fairness.
The Challenge
Xapien’s rapid expansion signals progress, yet process gaps risk inconsistency in how we hire, manage, and retain talent—particularly in 6–12-month retention periods. The challenge is to implement systems that enable consistent, fair, and scalable talent management without adding unnecessary bureaucracy.
The Role
People & Talent Lead
Reports To:
Leader of People & Finance, with strategic oversight from the CEO. Collaborates closely with the Talent Partner, leveraging operational support.
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Core Responsibility:
Design and implement centralised people and talent frameworks—supporting managers in their leadership while ensuring neutral, scalable, and efficient decision-making.
The role is structured as follows:
- You build the system within a defined operating model.
- Managers retain ownership of people decisions.
- Operations support coordinates and administers frameworks.
Key Responsibilities
Manager Enablement
- Build tools, templates, and guidelines for hiring, development, and team leadership.
- Design manager training on:
- Effective feedback
- Performance conversations
- Role clarity
- Decision-making
- Support managers, ensuring their coaching role while holding them accountable.
Talent & Hiring Systems
- Define and scale a structured, high-standard hiring system, including:
- Role descriptions, interview frameworks, and scorecards.
- Assessment criteria and implementation in structured and efficient onboarding.
- Establish a clear hiring bar and consistent evaluation processes.
- Work alongside the Talent Partner (who retains end-to-end hiring management).
- Optimise hiring data and funnel insights for improved quality, speed, and consistency.
Performance & Progression
- Design lightweight performance and progression frameworks with:
- Clear role expectations.
- Measurable success criteria.
- Structured career paths.
- Provide implementation tools, processes, and guidance for performance reviews.
- Ensure calibration and consistency across teams.
Reward, Benchmarking & Fairness
- Collaborate with Finance to develop and benchmark a reward philosophy.
- Lead guidance on:
- Pay reviews, promotions, and reward decisions.
- Ensuring fairness globally and equitably.
- Support discussions on cost affordability, planning trade-offs, and scalability.
Onboarding & Early Employee Experience
- Design a structured onboarding funnel to ensure rapid productivity.
- Define manager responsibilities for the rite of passage: Days 30, 60, and 90.
- Improve employee experience for tenure up to 12 months—focusing on role clarity, expectations, and career growth.
People Communications & Adoption
- Own rollout communications for people frameworks and initiatives.
- Ensure company-wide understanding and actions.
- Coordinate with existing operations for delivery.
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System Design & Implementation
- Define end-to-end structure of people systems while keeping them practical and scalable.
- Foster transparency in process ownership and application.
- Explore AI’s role in shaping the workforce and advising leaders on team-working shifts ahead.
What Success Looks Like
- Managers feel equipped and confident to drive hiring and performance.
- Hiring quality and consistency improve with improved metrics and candidate choices.
- Performance and progression decisions become clear, fair, and aligned.
- Onboarding flow becomes smoother and more effective for new employees.
- Elevated company reputation for empathy, fairness, and engagement.
- Leadership gains actionable data on people decisions.
What You’ll Bring
Required Attributes:
- Hands-on experience building people systems during periods of hyper-growth in tech or enterprise environments.
- Expertise in:
- Performance management
- Progression frameworks
- Hiring systems design
- Compensation & reward structuring
- Practical mindset—comfortable building from scratch, not inheriting established processes.
- Commercial acumen with decision-making judgment.
- Capable of influencing leaders with credible, well-researched analysis rather than positional authority.
- Strong tolerance for ambiguity, complexity, and operational speed.
- Systems-focussed, but retains a healthy skepticism toward excessive bureaucracy.
Exceptional EVP (Employee Promise)
We value growth and collaboration:
- "We’ll work with you"— Your development and opportunities are integral to your contributions. We offer:
- Ownership stakes through our equity program—aligning your success with ours.
- Comprehensive private health and life coverage, prioritising well-being.
- Unlimited holidays—take time when it suits.
- £1,000 annual learning budget — whether it’s new stratgies or personal interest exploration.
Most importantly: Your growth will always be a priority. We won’t just support you; we’ll foster your fullest potential.
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