Head of People & Culture

Curewiki; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Curewiki is building a patient-initiated clinical research discovery platform with a strong European footprint and expanding commercial arms. The Head of People will own talent acquisition, people operations, compensation architecture, and culture across multiple countries, partnering closely with founders and leadership to scale the organization rapidly.

You’ll scale from a core team to a multi-country operation, design transparent processes, and implement an AI-first approach to sourcing,

Qualifications

• Fluent professional English
• Experience in healthtech, life sciences, or regulated industries
• Remote work across the EU; Belgium-based preference (nice to have)
• Direct ownership from day one; co-architect of the organisation

Responsibilities

• Own the hiring engine end to end: open-role portfolio, search strategy per role, and pipeline health
• Run the hiring process with speed, transparency, and evidence-based feedback
• Maintain the A-player bar by prioritising outcomes over credentials
• Build Curewiki’s employer brand to attract top talent
• Own employment setup across European footprint: contracts, EOR/entity decisions
• Manage core people operations with payroll, social security, absence, and policies
• Make onboarding productive within 90 days; set clear expectations
• Build compensation framework with bands and transparent philosophy
• Install a lightweight performance rhythm with clear goals and honest feedback
• Coach leadership on team design and organisational decisions
• Run AI-first people function: sourcing, screening, analytics with human oversight
• Close senior hires: show how you found them and won them
• Set up or run employment across multiple EU countries; cost differences between EOR vs entity
• Build compensation and equity framework from scratch or rebuild it
• Be a genuine player-coach; own the work and build systems
• Demonstrate AI-enabled impact on work processes

Skills

Talent acquisition

People operations

Compensation & equity

Leadership

AI-first mindset

Job description

Curewiki operates a patient-initiated clinical research discovery platform live across Europe. We’re vendor-cleared at top-tier pharma sponsors and CROs, our hospital footprint is expanding through EU interoperability initiatives, and we’re building out our commercial organisation right now — multiple senior and country-level roles open at once, across several countries, with a strict A-player bar. That build doesn’t happen without someone who owns it.

Your responsibilities:

Talent acquisition

• Own the hiring engine end to end: open-role portfolio, search strategy per role, and pipeline health, personally driving the most senior and hardest searches
• Run the hiring process as promised in every posting: fast, transparent, evidence-based, with feedback at every step, completed in weeks rather than months
• Hold the A-player bar in every process — evidence over titles and degrees, and the courage to keep a seat empty rather than fill it with a B
• Build the employer brand that makes A-players come to us

People operations & employment infrastructure

• Own employment setup across our European footprint: contracts, EOR/entity decisions per country, and compliant onboarding wherever the right person lives
• Run core people operations with our part-time HR support and external providers: payroll coordination, social security administration, absence, and policies
• Make onboarding a weapon: new hires productive in days, with clear 90-day expectations from day one

Compensation & equity architecture

• Build Curewiki’s compensation framework: bands per role and level, benchmarked for the European markets we hire in, with a clear transparency philosophy

Performance, development & culture

• Install a lightweight performance rhythm: clear goals, honest feedback, development conversations that actually happen
• Build development around strengths, with stretch assignments and promotion paths earned by outcomes
• Own culture deliberately in a remote, multi-country company
• Act as coach and confidential sounding board for leadership on team design and organisational decisions

AI-first people function

• Run the people function AI-first: sourcing, screening support, documentation, and analytics leveraged with modern tooling, with human judgment where it counts most

• You’ve owned the people function through this exact stage before: scaling from a small core team to a multi-country organisation — and can show what you built and what broke without you

• You’ve personally closed senior hires (not just coordinated them), and can walk us through the last two: how you found them, what nearly lost them, how you won

• You know European employment across borders: you’ve set up or run employment in multiple EU countries, and know when to use an EOR vs. open an entity, and what each costs

• You’ve built a compensation and equity framework from scratch (or rebuilt a broken one) and can defend the design choices

• You’re a genuine player-coach: happiest owning the work directly, building systems as you go, hiring your own team only when volume truly demands it

• You run AI-first and can show how it’s changed the way you work

• Fluent professional English

Nice to have

• Experience in healthtech, life sciences, or another regulated industry

• Experience supporting a company through a financing round and the team scaling that follows

• Familiarity with Belgian employment and social security specifics

• Remote work within the EU, with a Belgium-based preference

• A player-coach mandate: real ownership from day one, not administration of someone else’s decisions

• Direct access to and partnership with the Founder & CEO and leadership team — you’re treated as co-architect of the organisation

• A fast, transparent hiring process (and yes, the same process you’ll run for others is run on you): intro call, founder deep-dive, practical working session, COO conversation, references — feedback at every step, completed in weeks not months

• A high-velocity, mission-driven team that writes things down, moves fast, and takes AI leverage as a baseline in every role

• The chance to build the people function of a healthtech scale-up from the ground up, across multiple countries