VP of People

General Counsel AI, Inc.; San Mateo (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental & Vision

Life & Disability Insurance

Retirement Plan

Parental Leave

Continuous Development

In-Office Meals

Paid Time Off

Company Holidays

Home Office Setup

Cell Phone Reimbursement

Relocation Support

Job summary

GC AI is seeking a VP of People to lead our People function end-to-end during a period of rapid growth. You will report to the COO and collaborate with the CEO and senior leadership to build infrastructure, practices, and leadership capabilities needed for the next phase of growth.

You'll inherit established People and Talent teams, set strategy and roadmaps, and own talent attraction, development, and retention.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of People/HR experience, including leading a People function at a high-growth tech company.
• Ability to build foundational People programs and infrastructure from the ground up.
• Strong experience with compensation, leveling, benefits, performance management, and compliance.
• Experience partnering with executives on org design and workforce planning.
• Experience building and managing a People team, with hands-on leadership.
• Strong judgment and communication skills for coaching leaders and handling sensitive employee situations.
• Genuine passion for AI and applying it across People functions.
• Experience supporting distributed or international teams.

Responsibilities

• Own the People function end-to-end (HR ops, talent, benefits, total rewards, compliance, employee relations, talent acquisition).
• Hire, build, and manage the People team as we scale.
• Partner with CEO, COO, and executives on organizational design and workforce planning.
• Coach executives and managers through organizational and people challenges; implement practical programs for consistent management.
• Own Talent and ensure alignment of workforce planning, hiring, leveling, and compensation.
• Oversee benefits and total rewards, including open enrollment, international benefits, and compensation frameworks.
• Drive performance management, calibration, feedback, and promotions; tie to development and compensation decisions.
• Lead employee relations, investigations, exits, and risk mitigation with Legal alignment.
• Build scalable HR infrastructure (onboarding, manager enablement, HR tech, analytics, self-service).
• Identify and implement AI applications across People operations and workflows.
• Own HRIS strategy and migration planning.

Skills

People leadership

HR strategy

Compensation & leveling

Executive partnering

Global teams

AI enthusiasm

HRIS migration

HR analytics

Tools

HRIS systems

HR analytics

Job description

GC AI is the legal intelligence platform built for in-house legal teams and companies. Your decisions shape the product, your impact is immediate, and you own your work from day one.

More than 2,100 companies run their legal work on GC AI, including 300+ public companies, 75+ unicorns, and teams at Nestlé, Hitachi Digital, Lockheed Martin, Miro, Bass Pro Shops, Riot Games, SKIMS, Liquid Death, Vercel, TIME, and Post Holdings. The platform holds an 80 NPS, more than double the B2B SaaS industry average, reinforcing GC AI as the leading legal AI platform for companies of all sizes.

GC AI has doubled ARR in six months. We won #1 Highest Customer Satisfaction at the 2026 SaaS Awards. Our investors include Scale Venture Partners, Northzone, Sound Ventures, and Guillermo Rauch, CEO of Vercel.

You’ll define how things get built, not follow someone else’s playbook. Six principles guide how the team works:

• 1% Better Every Day: small, compounding improvements across everything you ship.
• Customer Obsession: start with the customer and work backward.
• Ship Today: bias toward action and iteration over perfection.
• Find a Way: resourcefulness and ambition over constraint.
• Care: be direct, like an honest friend, even when it’s uncomfortable.
• Own It: full accountability, proactive communication, and attention to detail.

About the Role

As our VP of People, you will lead GC AI's People function end-to-end through a period of rapid, sustained scaling. You'll report to our COO and partner directly with our CEO, Executive Leadership Team, and senior leadership to build the infrastructure, organizational practices, and leadership capabilities GC AI needs for its next phase of growth.

This is a builder's role. You're joining at an inflection point: GC AI has scaled quickly, and we are building many of the People systems, programs, and operating rhythms needed to support our growth. You'll inherit strong People and Talent teams and own both functions, setting the strategy, operating model, and priorities for how GC AI attracts, hires, develops, and retains exceptional talent. You'll also have a leadership team that wants to invest, with significant opportunity to determine what needs to exist, establish the roadmap, and build it.

You'll need to be equally comfortable advising executives on challenging organizational decisions, coaching a manager through a performance issue, designing a compensation framework, and getting into the details of an HRIS implementation. You'll build the team around you but will also be in a hands-on leadership role.

What You'll Do

• Quickly assess our current People landscape: team, systems, policies, compliance, manager practices, organizational risks - and build a clear, sequenced roadmap for what GC AI needs now versus later.
• Own the People function end-to-end, including HR operations, talent, benefits and total rewards, compliance, employee relations and talent acquisition.
• Hire, build, and manage the People team as we scale.
• Partner with our CEO, COO, Executive Leadership, and cross-functional partners in Finance, Legal, and functional leaders on organizational design and workforce planning, including headcount, team structure, role clarity, and evolving leadership needs.
• Coach executives and managers through organizational, performance, and people challenges, while building practical programs that make great management more consistent across the company.
• Own the Talent function, connecting workforce planning, hiring, leveling, and compensation to create clear guidance and consistent practices for recruiters and hiring managers.
• Own benefits and total rewards, including open enrollment, PEO and international benefits administration, compensation philosophy, job architecture, leveling, and compensation frameworks.
• Drive performance management, calibration, feedback, and promotions, connecting performance, leveling, development, and compensation decisions.
• Lead employee relations, including performance and conduct issues, leaves, accommodations, investigations, and exits, partnering closely with Legal on compliance and risk.
• Build the foundational programs that help our culture and employee experience scale, including onboarding, manager enablement, and the systems and operating rhythms employees need to succeed.
• Build scalable infrastructure across immigration and mobility, People reporting and analytics, employee self-service, and HR technology, including evaluating and leading an HRIS migration.
• Identify and implement practical applications of AI and LLMs across People operations, employee self-service, manager enablement, analytics, and internal workflows.
• Own the strategy for HRIS and HR operations, ensuring systems and processes scale with the business.

What You'll Bring

• 12+ years of People/HR experience, including leading or building a People function at a high-growth technology company - ideally scaling a People function through a similar stage of growth from ~50–300+ employees.
• Proven ability to build foundational People programs and infrastructure from the ground up, not just operate established systems.
• Strong experience across compensation and leveling, benefits, performance management, employee relations, and employment compliance.
• Experience partnering with executives on organizational design, workforce planning, and complex people decisions.
• Experience building and managing a People team, with a willingness to stay hands-on while the function is lean.
• Strong judgment and communication skills, with the ability to coach leaders and navigate sensitive employee situations.
• A genuine passion for AI - you already use it, experiment with it, and see opportunities to apply it across the People function.
• Experience supporting distributed or international teams.

Nice to Have

• Experience in an AI-native company, or a company selling into legal and legal adjacent personas.

A Note On Pace

We’re building something new in a once-in-a-generation shift in technology and the legal industry, so we move at a relentless pace. We expect urgency, ownership, and good judgment even when things aren’t perfectly clear. If you need structure and consensus to do your best work, this isn’t the right place for you. If you thrive in ambiguity and growth, work with intensity, and want real responsibility, keep reading. We’re excited to meet you.

How We Work Together

GC AI is a distributed company with team members across North America, and soon Europe. We believe that because our business is AI, human connection matters more, not less. We invest in bringing people together through our hub model: regular coworking sessions, customer dinners, team and company offsites. If you’re in a location without an office, expect up to 10% travel (and more for customer-facing roles).

Team members in the San Francisco Bay Area and Provo, UT (within 50 miles of the office) work together on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. As we grow, we plan to establish permanent offices in more hub cities, and we will look to our team members to help build that in-person culture. We currently hire across the United States and Canada.

Perks & Benefits

• Medical, Dental & Vision — Comprehensive coverage for you and your family
• Life & Disability Insurance — Added protection when you need it most
• Retirement Plan — Plan and save for your future
• Parental Leave — Time to focus on what matters most
• Continuous Development — Up to $3,000/year for job-related learning & development
• In-Office Meals — DoorDash credits for breakfast, lunch & dinner
• Paid Time Off — 15 PTO days + 5 sick days, with opportunities to accrue more
• Company Holidays — 15 company holidays + 3 additional "Me Days"
• Home Office Setup — $500 for new hires to build out their workspace
• Cell Phone Reimbursement — $50/month toward your phone bill
• Relocation Support — Assistance to help make your move easier

Equal Opportunity Employment

GC AI is an equal opportunity employer that supports workplace diversity and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, gender identity/expression, national origin, age, military service eligibility, veteran status, sexual orientation, marital status, physical or mental disability, or any other protected class. GC AI is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodation to applicants with physical and mental disabilities. #LI-GCAI