Director, People

Recursion; Oxford; On-site; GBP 109,000 - 144,000; Full time

Job summary

Recursion seeks a People Director to lead its people strategy in the UK. The role focuses on enhancing the employee experience and ensuring compliance across regions, while managing HR operations and developing high-performing teams. Ideal candidates will have a strong HR background in tech and a passion for improving people processes.

Benefits

Annual bonus

Equity compensation

Comprehensive benefits package

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in a senior People/HR leadership role within tech-enabled industries.
• Strong understanding of UK employment law and Employee Relations practices.
• Experience with HR data management, analytics, and GDPR compliance.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a high-performing People team within the UK.
• Serve as a People Business Partner to UK Leaders, providing strategic HR support.
• Drive innovation in People processes, pioneering AI and automation-first solutions.

Skills

Strategic HR Leadership

Employee Relations

Project Management

Process Improvement

Communication

Collaboration

Job description

Your work will change lives. Including your own.

The Impact You’ll Make

Recursion is seeking a dynamic People Director, UK to play a pivotal role in leading and shaping our people strategy and operations within the UK and supporting our North American and EOR (employer of record) operations. Based in either our London or Milton Park site (with travel expected between both), you will be instrumental in driving initiatives that enhance the employee experience and ensure our people infrastructure, processes, and programs align with our ambitious mission and growth. You will develop and execute scalable, people-centric solutions, ensuring compliance and a positive employee experience across the UK, EU, Canada and US.

This role is for you if you are passionate about building and supporting high-performing teams, thrive on improving people processes with a human touch, excel at bringing clarity to complex situations, and enjoy the full scope of people operations and strategy in an international environment.

In this role you will:

• Lead and develop a high-performing People team within the UK.
• Serve as a People Business Partner to UK Leaders, providing strategic HR support, with a close partnership with the CFO and CSO and their organisations.
• Be a trusted advisor on UK/EU people operations and employee experience.
• Act as the UK ER Lead and provide support for global Employee Relations matters.
• Take ownership of People Data management and ensure GDPR compliance.
• Curate and implement policies and procedures aligned with business needs, UK/EU labor laws, and company culture.
• Partner with other People Teams (e.g., Talent Acquisition, Reward), Finance, and Legal to align operations with organizational objectives.
• Drive innovation in People processes, actively pioneering the identification and implementation of cutting-edge AI and automation-first solutions to deliver exceptional service, operational excellence, and robust compliance across the UK and globally.
• Provide project leadership for Global People Operations initiatives. Deputise for the Executive Director, Global People Operations as needed.

The Team You Will Join:

Recursion’s People Team creates the conditions to enable and sustain high performing teams, and helps employees do the best work of their careers. We are talent scouts and partners, creating experiences and outcomes that support our employees and drive business success. We focus on scalable solutions that add value across geographies, while providing individual advisory partnership and support where it matters most. With a people + data approach, we ensure Recursion has the people, culture and operating dynamics to accelerate drug discovery and get medicines to patients faster.

Reporting directly to the Chief People Officer, you will be a key leader within the global People Operations & Experience team. The team's purpose is to establish a solid foundation, providing overarching support to the wider People team and the business. Focused on the employee experience, payroll, benefits, compliance, and HR systems, they create efficient, scalable solutions that constantly improves what it feels like to work at Recursion. With a data-driven and people-first approach, they align people operations with company goals, fostering a productive and engaging workplace culture. You will play a crucial role in building a scalable, future-proof People infrastructure.

The Experience You’ll Need:

• 5+ years of experience in a senior People/HR leadership role within tech-enabled industries.
• Proven track record driving the People agenda specifically within the UK.
• Strong, practical understanding of UK employment law and Employee Relations practices. Experience with EU employment law is a great plus.
• Proven track record of operating as a highly strategic People Business Partner, adept at influencing and advising senior leadership, particularly within tech-enabled organisations, to achieve critical business objectives.
• Experience in developing and mentoring team members.
• Strong project management skills and a mindset for process improvement and operational excellence.
• Experience with HR data management, analytics, and GDPR compliance.
• Excellent communication, influencing, and collaboration skills, capable of working effectively in a global, matrixed organization.
• Experience working across different countries and time zones is beneficial.
• Experience in deploying AI and Automation first solutions

Location:

• This role can be based in our London or Milton Park office.
• Regular travel between both sites will be required.

Working Location & Compensation:

This position can be based at one of our offices located in London or Milton Park. Regular travel between both sites will be required.

At Recursion, we believe that every employee should be compensated fairly. Based on the skill and level of experience required for this role, the estimated current annual base range for this role is: £109,700 - £144,000 GBP. You will also be eligible for an annual bonus and equity compensation, as well as a comprehensive benefits package.

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The Values We Hope You Share:

• We act boldly with integrity. We are unconstrained in our thinking, take calculated risks, and push boundaries, but never at the expense of ethics, science, or trust.
• We care deeply and engage directly. Caring means holding a deep sense of responsibility and respect - showing up, speaking honestly, and taking action.
• We learn actively and adapt rapidly. Progress comes from doing. We experiment, test, and refine, embracing iteration over perfection.
• We move with urgency because patients are waiting. Speed isn’t about rushing but about moving the needle every day.
• We take ownership and accountability. Through ownership and accountability, we enable trust and autonomy—leaders take accountability for decisive action, and teams own outcomes together.
• We are One Recursion. True cross-functional collaboration is about trust, clarity, humility, and impact. Through sharing, we can be greater than the sum of our individual capabilities.

Our values underpin the employee experience at Recursion. They are the character and personality of the company demonstrated through how we communicate, support one another, spend our time, make decisions, and celebrate collectively.

More About Recursion

Recursion (NASDAQ: RXRX) is a clinical stage TechBio company leading the space by decoding biology to radically improve lives. Enabling its mission is the Recursion OS, a platform built across diverse technologies that continuously generate one of the world’s largest proprietary biological and chemical datasets. Recursion leverages sophisticated machine-learning algorithms to distill from its dataset a collection of trillions of searchable relationships across biology and chemistry unconstrained by human bias. By commanding massive experimental scale — up to millions of wet lab experiments weekly — and massive computational scale — owning and operating one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, Recursion is uniting technology, biology and chemistry to advance the future of medicine.

Recursion is headquartered in Salt Lake City, where it is a founding member of BioHive, the Utah life sciences industry collective. Recursion also has offices in Toronto, Montréal, New York, London, Oxford area, and the San Francisco Bay area. Learn more at www.Recursion.com, or connect onX (formerly Twitter)andLinkedIn.

Recursion is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected under applicable federal, state, local, or provincial human rights legislation.

Accommodations are available on request for candidates taking part in all aspects of the selection process.

Recruitment & Staffing Agencies: Recursion Pharmaceuticals and its affiliate companies do not accept resumes from any source other than candidates. The submission of resumes by recruitment or staffing agencies to Recursion or its employees is strictly prohibited unless contacted directly by Recursion’s internal Talent Acquisition team. Any resume submitted by an agency in the absence of a signed agreement will automatically become the property of Recursion, and Recursion will not owe any referral or other fees. Our team will communicate directly with candidates who are not represented by an agent or intermediary unless otherwise agreed to prior to interviewing for the job.