People Director, US

About the role

The People Team’s mission is to build the systems, talent, and culture that drive business performance where everyone prospers. This role sits at the center of this work and operates in the business close up. As our US-based senior HR expert, you will be the connective tissue between our people strategy and day-to-day business execution, ensuring managers have the tools, data, answers, and support they need to make fast, confident people decisions. The ideal candidate brings 15+ years of progressive HR experience and thrives in the detail while driving us to scale with each project. You are equally comfortable in an executive leadership discussion about metrics that matter and in the weeds of helping a manager navigate a performance issue by the end of the day. You are relentlessly curious about what the data is telling you, and you use AI not as a novelty but as a core part of how you operate. Critically, you know how to work through and with HR Operations and Talent Acquisition to get things done — translating business needs into clear requirements and holding the system accountable to speed and quality.

Duties and Responsibilities:

Strategic HR Partnership & Business Performance

• Partner with executive and senior leadership to drive their organization’s needs to keep the business moving quickly and efficiently.
• Serve as a trusted, decisive advisor to executives on organizational effectiveness, headcount decisions, and change management - with a bias toward speed and clarity for all stakeholders.
• Maintain a constant pulse on organizational health - turnover trends, performance distribution, hiring velocity, engagement signals - and surface insights before they become problems.
• Partner with HR Operations to build and maintain people dashboards that give leaders real-time visibility into the health of their teams, enabling faster and better-informed decisions at every level.
• Translate business goals into people strategies with clear owners, timelines, and measurable outcomes - not just frameworks.
• Advocate for strategies and initiatives that create an engaging work environment across hiring, performance, and promotion decisions - tracked with data and held to the same accountability standards as any business metric.

Manager Enablement & Talent Operations

• Be the go-to HR expert for managers of our US workforce - providing fast, practical guidance on hiring, performance, development, and difficult people situations.
• Identify where managers are struggling, where teams are underperforming, and where early intervention can change outcomes - then work with HR Operations to build the tools and processes that address those gaps at scale.
• Partner with the Global HR leaders to enable managers through enablement and skills development.
• Ensure performance management is a driver of real business outcomes - recognition and performance improvement that connects directly to company priorities, development plans that accelerate productivity.
• Design onboarding frameworks that complement operational onboarding to get new hires to full contribution faster, partnering with HR Operations to implement and iterate based on performance data.
• Use AI tools to streamline talent workflows and your own work — from performance documentation to workforce analysis — so you can operate with speed and precision.
• Provide infrastructure to promotions and career development to ensure people grow in their roles and the business is never caught without a succession to critical roles.

People Operations Partnership

• Serve as the senior HR voice that shapes what HR Operations builds, prioritizes, and delivers - translating business and manager needs into clear, actionable requirements.
• Hold HR Operations accountable to speed and quality standards that match the pace of the business, escalating gaps and advocating for continuous improvement.
• Partner closely on process design, policy rollout, and systems changes — ensuring every solution is built with the end user (the manager) in mind. Use business data and feedback loops to identify operational bottlenecks and drive resolution in partnership with the HR Ops team.
• Ensure that AI-powered HR tools and automation are being adopted effectively, and provide business-side input on where technology can have the highest impact.

Employee Relations & Compliance

• Serve as the escalation point for complex employee relations matters, resolving issues quickly, fairly, and with minimal disruption to the business.
• Use case data and trend analysis to identify recurring employee relations patterns and address root causes systemically, not just case by case.
• Maintain sharp organizational compliance across federal, state, and local employment law, and partner with Legal to stay ahead of regulatory change — including emerging considerations around AI use in HR processes.
• Partner with HR Operations to ensure policies are clear, enforceable, current, and actually understood by the people who need to follow them.

Compensation & Total Rewards Advisory

• While Compensation is owned by a separate function, serve as the business-facing expert who translates compensation decisions into clear manager guidance and ensures pay decisions are made with speed, consistency, and equity.
• Flag compensation competitiveness concerns and retention risks to the Total Rewards team using real-time data and business context.
• Ensure managers have what they need to confidently and compliantly make and communicate compensation decisions.

Qualifications and Skills:

• 15+ years of progressive HR experience, with meaningful time spent in fast-paced, high-growth environments
• Demonstrated track record of improving manager effectiveness and driving business performance through HR partnership - without relying on direct authority or team ownership
• Strong data fluency - comfortable interpreting people dashboards, identifying trends, and translating data into clear, actionable recommendations
• Proven ability to work through HR Operations and cross-functional partners to get things done with speed and precision
• Experience with or strong working knowledge of AI tools applied to HR workflows (e.g., talent acquisition, performance management, workforce analytics)
• Deep knowledge of employment law, compliance, and HR best practices
• Exceptional communication and executive-level presence, with the ability to deliver hard messages with clarity and confidence
• Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, Organizational Psychology, or related field

Competencies & Attributes

• Performance-Oriented: Measures HR success by business outcomes and manager effectiveness, not activity or program count.
• Operationally Excellent: Knows how to work through systems and partners to deliver fast, high-quality solutions — without needing to own everything directly.
• Decisive & Trusted: Makes sound calls under pressure and earns credibility by being reliable, honest, and solutions-focused.
• Data-Driven: Keeps a live pulse on organizational health, partners to build the infrastructure to capture meaningful people data, and turns that data into decisions — not just decks.
• AI-Forward: Actively uses AI tools to operate faster and smarter, and advocates for their adoption across HR and the business.
• Influential Without Authority: Drives alignment and accountability across HR Operations and the broader organization through expertise, relationships, and clear communication — not hierarchy.
• Empathetic & Direct: Navigates sensitive situations with both care and speed, without letting either compromise the other.

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The US national base salary range for this full-time position is $163,000 -$288,000. Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations. Within the range, individual pay is determined by work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.

Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only and do not include applicable bonus, equity, or benefits.

You can find further details of our US benefits at https://www.ethoslife.com/careers/