# Head of People

**Company**: OpenRouter
**Location**: Remote (US)
**Work arrangement**: remote
**Experience**: senior
**Job type**: Full time
**Category**: Engineering
**Industry**: Technology

**Apply**: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openrouter/a547cd9c-ac94-4c10-8b01-fcde677656d9?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply
**Canonical**: https://yubhub.co/jobs/job_07774c79-2e9

## Description

## Head of People

We're looking for a Head of People who has done this before and built the people function from the ground up at a high-growth technical company and knows what matters at this stage.

This is not a traditional HR role but it's a builder-operator who owns the full people function: org design, comp & leveling, performance management, culture, and recruiting too. The recruiting team will report into this role.

## Responsibilities

- Design and implement compensation, leveling, and career ladder frameworks from scratch

- Establish lightweight, high-signal performance management systems

- Build onboarding, offboarding, and talent development programs that actually scale

- Define and reinforce company culture: remote-first, distributed, high-trust

- Partner with founders and leadership on org design and hiring strategy

- Own core people operations: benefits, payroll, employee relations

- Build and lead the recruiting function: hire and manage IC recruiters, own hiring from ~60 → 200+ without lowering the bar

## Requirements

- Have been the first or second People hire at a company that scaled from ~40 to 150+ people

- Strong People Ops generalist: comp & leveling, performance cycles, employee relations, onboarding/offboarding

- Remote-first experience is critical given our distributed culture

- Founder-friendly and low-ego; comfortable being both strategic and rolling up your sleeves

- Enough seniority to operate autonomously; no expectation of building a large team immediately

- Background in a technical company (AI, infrastructure, devtools, or engineering-heavy org)

- High agency, strong commercial mindset, will push back on leadership when needed

## Bonus points

- Built a comp framework and leveling system from scratch

- Navigated a company through a period of rapid headcount growth

- Can speak to specific programs you've built: onboarding, performance reviews, manager training

- Knows how to build culture in a remote/hybrid environment

- Comfortable operating without a lot of HR infrastructure in place yet

- Prior Head of People or strong #2 stepping into a first seat

- Experience competing for top-tier AI or engineering talent

## Skills

### Required
- compensation and benefits administration
- performance management
- onboarding and offboarding processes
- culture building
- recruiting and talent acquisition
- people operations
- HR software
- communication and interpersonal skills

### Nice to have
- AI infrastructure
- devtools
- engineering-heavy organization
- high-growth technical company
- remote-first experience
- founder-friendly and low-ego
- strong commercial mindset

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Source: [Apply at jobs.ashbyhq.com](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openrouter/a547cd9c-ac94-4c10-8b01-fcde677656d9?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply)