Senior Director, People

CoLab Software; Toronto; On-site; CAD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

CoLab is seeking a Senior Director, People & Operations to design systems and talent strategy enabling rapid scale while protecting what makes the company great. You will partner with the CEO and CTO to tackle sensitive org challenges and create space for customers, product, and strategy.

You’ll implement scalable operating systems, coach leaders, and raise the bar on talent management. This role is for someone energized by complexity and building high-performing teams in a fast-growth, B2B

Qualifications

• Experience owning People functions at a high-growth B2B software company.
• Proven ability to scale organizations through multiple growth stages.
• Strong expertise in organizational design, executive coaching, and talent strategy.
• Proven track record building high-performing teams and developing leaders.
• Operational mindset with a systems, metrics, and scalable-process approach.
• Experience collaborating with founders or executive leadership on company-wide decisions.
• Strong business acumen balancing people outcomes with company performance.
• Thoughtful, inclusive leadership style that builds trust while maintaining high expectations.

Responsibilities

• Design and continuously evolve CoLab's organizational structure to support scale.
• Serve as the trusted business partner to every functional leader, helping them build high-performing teams, make better organizational decisions, navigate difficult people challenges, and run their functions with greater clarity and effectiveness.
• Build scalable operating systems and cross-functional processes that improve execution.
• Uphold CoLab's culture and performance bar through every stage of the employee lifecycle.
• Serve as a strategic partner to the CEO, CTO, and executive team on organizational and business decisions.
• Lead strategic operational initiatives that remove friction across the business, improve execution, and help the executive team focus on the highest-leverage work.
• Coach managers to become exceptional leaders. Build manager capability through practical coaching, feedback, and clear people practices so every employee has a great manager - not just a great job.
• Raise the bar for talent across the company by improving hiring quality, calibration, succession planning, and performance management.

Skills

People leadership

Executive coaching

Talent strategy

Organizational design

Team scaling

Operational mindset

Executive collaboration

People analytics

Job description

At CoLab, we help engineering teams bring life-changing products to the world years sooner.

CoLab is the AI platform for driving stronger engineering decisions. Every design review in CoLab builds a knowledge repository of design feedback, decisions, and lessons learned - which AI agents draw from to flag issues on future designs before they compound. The more your team works in CoLab, the smarter it gets and the faster you arrive at the ideal design. Companies like Ford, Komatsu, and Johnson Controls use CoLab to catch issues earlier, eliminate rework cycles, and bring products to market faster.

We're looking for a collaborative and hands-on Senior Director, People & Operations to help build CoLab to become an industry leader.

In this role, you'll own the systems, structure, and talent strategy that allow a high-performing company to scale without losing what makes it great. You'll work together with our CEO and CTO to solve some of the most sensitive organizational challenges we'll face over the next several years. As you take ownership of these problems, you'll create the space for them to spend more of their time on customers, product, and company strategy.

This role will enable leaders to make difficult organizational decisions with confidence, while raising the standard for how we hire, develop, organize, and operate.

This role is for someone who’s energized by complexity. If you're looking for a steady-state People function to maintain, this probably isn't it. If you're excited by building systems that help exceptional people do the best work of their careers, we'd love to talk.

Our Ideal Candidate

You believe talent density is a competitive advantage and you're willing to make difficult tradeoffs to protect it.

You're equally comfortable discussing organizational design with executives and coaching a new manager through a difficult conversation.

You don't default to adding more process. You build systems that increase clarity, accountability, and speed.

You're highly operational. You know that great culture isn't created through perks or program - it's built through consistently making strategic choices about who joins the company, how teams are structured, how performance is managed, and how people are developed.

Responsibilities

• Design and continuously evolve CoLab's organizational structure to support scale.
• Serve as the trusted business partner to every functional leader, helping them build high-performing teams, make better organizational decisions, navigate difficult people challenges, and run their functions with greater clarity and effectiveness.
• Build scalable operating systems and cross-functional processes that improve execution.
• Uphold CoLab's culture and performance bar through every stage of the employee lifecycle.
• Serve as a strategic partner to the CEO, CTO, and executive team on organizational and business decisions.
• Lead strategic operational initiatives that remove friction across the business, improve execution, and help the executive team focus on the highest-leverage work.
• Coach managers to become exceptional leaders. Build manager capability through practical coaching, feedback, and clear people practices so every employee has a great manager - not just a great job.
• Raise the bar for talent across the company by improving hiring quality, calibration, succession planning, and performance management.

Qualifications

• Experience owning People functions at a high-growth B2B software company, with at least 200 people.
• Demonstrated success scaling organizations through multiple stages of growth.
• Strong experience in organizational design, executive coaching, and talent strategy.
• Proven ability to build high-performing teams and develop leaders.
• Deep operational mindset—you naturally think in systems, metrics, and scalable processes.
• Experience working together directly with founders or executive leadership teams on company-wide decisions.
• Strong business acumen and the ability to balance people outcomes with company performance.
• A thoughtful and inclusive approach that builds trust while maintaining high expectations.

Equity Note

Frequently cited statistics show that people who identify with historically marginalized groups are likely to apply to jobs only if they meet 100% of the qualifications. We encourage you to help us break that statistic and apply even if you don’t meet every single qualification - your potential is what matters most to us.