People & Culture Lead

Story Terrace Inc.; Greater London; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A mission-driven technology firm in Greater London is seeking a People & Culture Lead to define and execute a comprehensive people agenda as they scale their organization. This role involves overseeing recruitment, onboarding, and performance management, ensuring the company upholds its unique culture. The ideal candidate will have 5-10 years of experience in HR leadership, particularly in startup environments, and a track record of building core People systems. The position offers the opportunity to influence positive organizational change and impact a rapidly growing team.

Qualifications

• 5–10 years experience in People/HR leadership roles.
• Experience in a high-growth startup or scale-up.
• Proven capability in building People systems from scratch.

Responsibilities

• Lead recruitment lifecycle and improve time-to-hire rates.
• Manage employee onboarding and offboarding.
• Run company’s performance cycles and define goals.

Skills

People/HR leadership

Onboarding processes

Performance review cycles

Communication skills

Team management

Organizational skills

Job description

About Sava

All the health information we need is within us. Just below the skin. SAVA is redefining the way people interact with their health by developing the most advanced biosensing technology science has to offer, capable of accessing bodily information in a painless, real-time and affordable way.

The Role

Sava Technologies is hiring a People & Culture Lead to build the foundations that let a high-performing team scale fast without losing what makes us great. This isn’t a “policy and paperwork” role; as the first-ever dedicated People lead, you’ll own the full people agenda end-to-end, leading everything from talent acquisition, onboarding, performance management, and employee engagement, to driving and maintaining our culture.

You’ll be joining us at a critical phase as we scale up our organisation and grow into a rapidly evolving, multinational company. You’ll report directly into the our founders and act as a strategic partner to our functional leaders ensuring we have the people, practices, and culture in place to enable our high performance teams. The Office Manager will report into you, and as you embed yourself into the organisation, you’ll go onto manage our team of Talent Acquisition Specialists.

If you like building systems from scratch, turning values into daily behaviour, and are looking for a unique opportunity to shape a deeply mission-driven, 80+ global team member organisation, this role is for you.

What You'll Do

• Lead the recruitment lifecycle, from overseeing recruitment pipelines to managing pipeline health and improving time-to-hire rates across all categories.
• Improve and manage employee onboarding and offboarding, setting 30/60/90 plans, ensuring rapid integration and fixing gaps in training and enablement.
• Run the company’s biannual performance cycles: goals and reviews; performance calibration; promotion criteria; a consistent approach to underperformance; definition of new career paths as the company grows.
• Be the point person for concerns, conflicts, wellbeing, and sensitive issues.
• Shape the company’s culture, values and behaviours, running engagement and feedback loops, comms, and recognition.
• Define leadership and talent objectives, leading the construction of a 12–18 month people roadmap aligned to the broader business plan.
• Improve role design, levelling, interviewer training, referrals, closing playbooks, and capacity planning.
• Collaborate with Top Management to shape team structure, manager load, and quarterly hiring plans.
• Maintain compensation & equity framework, tracking and analysing bands, pay reviews, and introducing clear, simple governance.

What We're Looking For

• 5–10 years experience in People/HR leadership roles, 2–3 years of which were in a high-growth startup or scale-up.
• Demonstrated ownership of onboarding processes, performance review cycles, and employee relations.
• Proven 0→1 capability: built (or rebuilt) core People systems and operating rhythms from scratch.
• Hands‑on People Ops competence including employment agreements, policy writing, HRIS/data hygiene, and scalable processes.
• Comfortable owning UK employment fundamentals and knowing when to bring in external counsel and/or vendors.
• Experience implementing performance review cycles: goals, written assessments, calibration, progression and levels.
• Utmost discretion and sound judgement when handling employee relations and confidential information.
• Clear, direct communicator who can influence senior leaders and support managers.
• A results‑oriented, low‑ego leader who emphasises practical and pragmatic execution, team effectiveness, and meaningful impact over corporate theatrics.
• Strong organisational and leadership skills, with experience directly managing a small team.
• Warm but firm: supportive, fair, decisive - especially under pressure.

Bonus Points For

• Previous experience building a People function across multiple geographies or distributed teams.

Why Sava?

This is a high‑ownership, high‑responsibility role in a company that’s building something complex, meaningful, and fast. The expectations are high, the learning curve is steep, and the work is often messy - but the impact is real. We don’t have room for egos or passengers. What we do have is a team of thoughtful, driven, and mission‑aligned people who are committed to building something better—and doing it with urgency and integrity.