Head of People & Performance

The role

You will be the first Head of People & Performance, reporting to the CEO and sitting on the leadership team. You will build the hiring, performance, pay, people operations and compliance systems that scale a team of 50 across more than 10 European countries.

What you will do

• Design one company-wide performance cycle and run the first one
• Build the employee experience from first day to last
• Build compensation bands and a light leveling structure
• Standardize pay awards and equity top-ups
• Own how the company hires: scorecards, interview packs and the recruiting system
• Run people operations end-to-end, including contracts, onboarding, offboarding, HRIS, payroll inputs and benefits by country
• Coach leaders and team leads on people and performance
• Turn the company culture into hiring, review and reward practices
• Keep the company compliant across more than 10 countries, including employment structure and ISO documentation

Required qualifications

• Experience building a people system at a fast-growing company, such as a Series A company that grew past 100 people or a people function at a larger scale-up
• Systems thinking
• Comfort with numbers: comp bands, equity and headcount plans
• Experience operating across countries with complex employment rules
• Detail-oriented, strong writing skills
• Discretion with confidential information
• Willingness to push back on founders
• Curiosity about robotics and deployment work
• Direct and fast in 1:1s, with familiarity with modern AI tools

Nice to have

• Experience with Deel, Shapes and Ashby, or equivalents
• Experience automating people-ops work with AI tools
• Experience in a hardware or deep-tech company

About the company

Sunrise Robotics builds flexible, intelligent robots that enhance human capabilities and existing machinery for manufacturers, especially small and medium-sized enterprises. The company has doubled its team to 50 people in the last 9 months.