Founding People Lead — Build Automated, Global People Ops

Optiml; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Direct impact

Ownership of tooling

Growth exposure

Culture shaping

Learning and development budget

Job summary

Optiml seeks a Founding People Lead to build the people function from the ground up in London. You will design automated systems, treat People Ops as a product, and scale hiring across commercial, technical, and operational roles.

You'll own end-to-end responsibilities—from recruiting and onboarding to performance management and HR operations—while shaping culture in a distributed, hub-and-spoke setup with hubs in Zurich and London. This role requires strategic, hands-on leadership.

Qualifications

• 4–7 years in People Ops, HR or Recruitment, ideally in a startup or fast-paced setting.
• Ownership of full people function or major processes end-to-end from scratch.
• Track record in full-cycle recruiting across multiple roles and departments.
• Strong stakeholder management across distributed teams and founders.
• Business acumen to align people decisions with business needs.
• Builder mentality; daily use of AI tools to remove manual work.
• Excellent English; German a plus.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end recruitment across commercial, technical, and operational roles.
• Build and automate onboarding, offboarding, and performance workflows.
• Own the people tech stack and reduce manual admin.
• Design culture rituals and communication systems for a distributed team.
• Lead HR operations and compliance across entities; interface with Head of Operations.

Skills

People Ops ownership

Startup experience

Full-cycle recruiting

Stakeholder management

English proficiency

AI tooling mindset

Tools

Notion

Slack

AI agents

HRIS

Job description

Optiml seeks a Founding People Lead to build the people function from the ground up in London. You will design automated systems, treat People Ops as a product, and scale hiring across commercial, technical, and operational roles.

You'll own end-to-end responsibilities—from recruiting and onboarding to performance management and HR operations—while shaping culture in a distributed, hub-and-spoke setup with hubs in Zurich and London. This role requires strategic, hands-on leadership.