People Programs Lead

Reinforced Learning; Town of Tonawanda (NY); Vor Ort; USD 140.000 - 180.000; Vollzeit

Zusammenfassung

Reinforced Learning seeks a seasoned leader to own People Programs, reporting to the Head of Business Operations & People. You will design and own comp philosophy, leveling, career paths, performance management, learning & development, and retention across a lean, talent-dense team and broader expert workforce.

You will partner with founders and leaders to build scalable, evidence-based programs that fit an AI-native company’s needs, balancing speed and rigor with a focus on quality and

Qualifikationen

• 5-8+ years across top-tier strategy consulting, analytical or strategy & operations roles and core People/HR programs.

Aufgaben

• Design Reinforced Learning’s total compensation strategy - philosophy, bands, leveling, refresh cadence, and equity framework — and refresh it annually against benchmarks and market signals.
• Build the career pathways and leveling rubric that operators see, in writing, what excellence at the next level looks like and how to get there.
• Stand up a performance management cycle that is fast, written, and useful to calibrate across the company without becoming a tax.
• Design learning & development programs for a high-agency, early-career workforce — onboarding, manager training, technical depth, and feedback culture.
• Own retention as a measurable outcome: define the leading indicators, build the sensing systems, and run programs that move the metric.
• Partner with leadership and finance on org design, headcount planning, and comp/burn tradeoffs that shape the next phase of our growth.
• Treat People programs as products — instrument them, measure adoption and outcomes, and iterate. Bring the same analytical rigor you would to a P&L.
• Create and manage 1099 program

Kenntnisse

Quantitative modeling

Strategic thinking

Data-driven decisions

Written-first

Stakeholder management

Jobbeschreibung

Overview

first dedicated People Programs hire, reporting to the Head of Business Operations & People. You will own the systems that turn Reinforced Learning from a fast-growing team into a durable institution. Join to help build comp philosophy and bands, leveling and career pathways, performance management, learning & development, and retention. You will partner directly with the founders and functional leaders to design programs that fit a company supporting a lean, talent-dense team and a broader expert workforce, both held to a high quality bar.

You are excited to tackle the talent opportunities specific to an AI-native company, and/or internalize the insights from the kind of work that Handshake AI, Block, and a small set of others have had to navigate as they reorient around AI products and AI-native talent. Compensation gravity is changing. Career ladders that worked five years ago do not. We need someone who has the analytical horsepower to redesign these systems from first principles, the taste to know what "excellent" looks like, and the operating instincts to roll programs out with efficiency, not bureaucracy.

Responsibilities

• Design Reinforced Learning’s total compensation strategy - philosophy, bands, leveling, refresh cadence, and equity framework — and refresh it annually against benchmarks and market signals.
• Build the career pathways and leveling rubric that operators see, in writing, what excellence at the next level looks like and how to get there.
• Stand up a performance management cycle that is fast, written, and useful to calibrate across the company without becoming a tax.
• Design learning & development programs for a high-agency, early-career workforce — onboarding, manager training, technical depth, and feedback culture.
• Own retention as a measurable outcome: define the leading indicators, build the sensing systems, and run programs that move the metric.
• Partner with leadership and finance on org design, headcount planning, and comp/burn tradeoffs that shape the next phase of our growth.
• Treat People programs as products — instrument them, measure adoption and outcomes, and iterate. Bring the same analytical rigor you would to a P&L.
• Create and manage 1099 program

Required Qualifications

• 5-8+ years of experience across a combination of top-tier strategy consulting, analytical or strategy & operations roles, and core People / HR programs work.
• Time at companies known for strong People programs (e.g., Stripe, Block/Square, Netflix, Airbnb, Bridgewater), or industry peers such as Mercor, Surge, or ScaleAI. You have seen what excellent looks like and have built (not just managed) at least one program end-to-end.
• Quantitative rigor that goes beyond comp benchmarks: you can model leveling decisions, attrition, comp band overlap, and equity refresh tradeoffs, and you reach for the spreadsheet before the slide.
• A point of view. You can debate with founders about decisions, and bring the data and the company’s values to back it up.
• Demonstrated ability to design programs from 0→ 1. Bonus points if you have done this through a strategy shift.
• A genuine interest in the Reinforced Learning thesis: that the future of AI is bottlenecked on human data, and that the workforce generating that data is the most important product decision the company makes.
• High agency, low ego, written-first. Comfortable in a 5-day in-office SF environment that prizes speed and direct feedback.

Preferred Qualifications

• You’ve been on the org-design side of an AI pivot or step-change in business model.
• You’ve designed compensation programs for a workforce that includes both full-time employees and a diverse contractor population.