Head of Human Resources - Data Center Startup

Futura Search Partners; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

Futura Search Partners is leading a search for the first senior People hire to build the function from the ground up. You will recruit the leadership and team that will scale across sites and headquarters, while establishing the structures to maintain coherence as the company doubles in size.

You will own talent acquisition end to end, set compensation frameworks, and shape onboarding, performance, and progression programs to support rapid growth and distributed operations.

Qualifications

• Senior People leader with experience in a high-growth, venture-backed environment.
• Hands-on recruiter capable of filling roles directly.
• Experience recruiting engineers, construction, operations and field staff.
• Knowledge of multi-state US employment and compliance.
• Commercial mindset with influence on organizational design and culture.

Responsibilities

• Own talent acquisition end to end and build the hiring engine.
• Set compensation philosophy and equity frameworks benchmarked to peers.
• Develop onboarding, performance and progression frameworks for scale.
• Partner with founders on organizational design and leadership needs.
• Own HR systems, policy, and employment law compliance across states.
• Shape and protect culture across distributed sites.

Skills

Senior leadership

Hands-on recruiting

Multi-state employment

Commercial mindset

Experience in high growth

Job description

Futura Search Partners is working on this search with a company building modular, edge data centers designed to be deployed at a pace the industry has not operated at. The business is backed by Tier 1 venture capital and is scaling quickly.

The role

This is the first senior People hire. You will build the function from the ground up: hiring the team that builds the product and the sites, and putting in place the structures that let a fast-growing company stay coherent as it doubles.

What you'll do

• Own talent acquisition end to end. Build the hiring engine, run senior searches yourself, and manage agency and in-house resource against an aggressive headcount plan.
• Set compensation philosophy and equity frameworks, benchmarked against both venture-backed technology companies and the infrastructure and construction market the business hires from.
• Build onboarding, performance and progression frameworks that are light enough not to slow anyone down and real enough to work at scale.
• Partner with the founders and leadership team on organisational design, succession and the decisions that come with rapid growth.
• Own the employment infrastructure: HR systems, policy, employment law compliance across the states the business operates in, and the practicalities of hiring field and site-based staff alongside a headquarters team.
• Shape and protect the culture as headcount grows, including across distributed sites.

What we're looking for

• Senior People leadership experience in a high-growth, venture-backed company, ideally through a period of rapid scaling.
• A hands-on recruiter. At this stage you will be filling roles yourself, not just overseeing a process.
• Comfortable hiring across very different populations: engineers and technical staff alongside construction, operations and field roles.
• Multi-state US employment knowledge, and the judgement to know when something needs counsel and when it doesn't.
• Commercial and direct. You will be in the room for decisions about how the company is built, not just how it is staffed.

Nice to have

• Data center, energy, construction or industrial hiring experience.
• Experience standing up a People function from scratch.
• Having scaled a company across multiple physical sites.