Head of People Partnership

The role

You will act as a trusted advisor to the Executive Leadership team, coaching them through rapid growth and change. You will partner with leaders on talent evaluation, compensation modeling, and conflict resolution.

What you will do

• Advise and coach four executives and their leadership teams on leading, organizing, and growing.
• Coach managers on feedback, delegation, and hard conversations.
• Operationalize performance through talent reviews, calibration, and succession planning.
• Guide pay and promotion decisions.
• Build compensation philosophy into day-to-day practices.
• Develop leadership understanding of pay, leveling, offers, promotions, and equity.
• Teach leaders to give direct feedback and de-escalate situations.
• Collaborate across peer functions to align changes.
• Use data and AI to measure impact and deliver insights.

Required qualifications

• 10+ years in HR, including business partnering to engineering or hardware organizations.
• Deep compensation expertise and experience teaching leaders to apply it.
• Strong coaching skills, including with first-time managers and senior executives.
• Experience with talent reviews, calibration, and promotion decisions.
• Credibility with technical leaders.
• First-principles thinking.
• Comfort with ambiguity.
• Self-direction to build without a roadmap.
• Skill at building relationships and aligning peers without formal authority.
• U.S. person (U.S. citizen, U.S. lawful permanent resident, or protected individual).

Nice to have

• Experience as a first or founding HR hire
• Experience in hardware, manufacturing, or deep tech

Benefits

• Stock options and/or long-term cash awards

Before you apply

• Must be a U.S. person (U.S. citizen, U.S. lawful permanent resident, or protected individual) to access export-controlled items.

About the company

Varda is accelerating the development of commercial space infrastructure, from in-orbit pharmaceutical processing to reliable and economical reentry capsules. The company is headquartered in El Segundo, California.