Head of People Operations
About this role
About IOMETE
IOMETE is the Sovereign Data+AI Platform: a self-hosted platform for data and AI, built on open standards like Apache Iceberg and Apache Spark, that enterprises run on-premises, in their own cloud, or hybrid — always under their own control. We serve organizations for whom data ownership and security are non-negotiable, including central banks, government ministries, large financial institutions, and global enterprises. IOMETE was recognized in the Gartner® Market Guide for Data Lakehouse Platforms.
We are a US C-Corp with a fully remote team of 30+ people, most of them engineers, spread across multiple countries. We are growing quickly, and we intend to keep the things that made us good while we do it: high trust, high ownership, low bureaucracy.
About the role
Until now, our co-founders have handled every contract, compliance question, hire, and offsite themselves. That worked for 10 people. It does not work at 30, and it will break at 60. We are hiring our first dedicated People leader to own the full employee lifecycle — from how we find and hire great people, to how we pay and contract them compliantly across countries, to how we keep a distributed team connected.
This is a builder role. You will inherit working-but-manual processes and turn them into a system that scales. You will be hands-on every day: drafting contracts, running hiring loops, and booking offsite venues are all part of the job. You will also have real influence on how IOMETE grows, working directly with the founders.
We want to be transparent from day one: the role currently spans three areas. As we grow, we expect recruiting to become a dedicated function. When that happens, you will help define and hire for that role, and you may have the opportunity to lead it, depending on how the role and the company develop.
What you will own
1. People Operations (roughly 50% of your time)
Own all employment and contractor agreements across countries, working through Deel (our global HRIS and EOR platform) and with external counsel where needed.
Ensure compliance with local labor law in every country where we employ or contract people: correct worker classification (employee vs. contractor), statutory benefits, notice periods, termination rules, and data privacy for employee records.
Design and maintain our compensation framework: levels, salary bands by role and geography, equity guidelines, and a consistent process for offers, raises, and promotions.
Run onboarding and offboarding end to end, so that a new engineer is productive in week one and a departing team member leaves cleanly and compliantly.
Build and document core people processes: performance reviews, leave and time off, policies and the employee handbook, and an HR calendar.
Keep people-related data accurate in Deel and produce simple reporting for the founders (headcount, cost, attrition, time to hire).
Be the trusted, confidential point of contact for team members on people matters.
2. Recruiting (roughly 35% of your time)
Fix our hiring process. Today, hiring managers do too much of it themselves. You will build a structured, repeatable process: intake meetings, role scorecards, interview loops, candidate communication, and fast, well-documented decisions.
Own the recruiting toolstack and pipeline, and run sourcing for priority roles, with a focus on senior engineering and go-to-market talent across multiple regions.
Partner with hiring managers to write job descriptions, calibrate the bar, and train interviewers.
Manage external recruiters and agencies when we use them.
Make sure every candidate, hired or not, has a professional and respectful experience with IOMETE.
Track and report on core recruiting metrics: pipeline health, time to hire, offer acceptance rate, and source of hire.
3. Culture, Events & Internal Operations (roughly 15% of your time)
Plan and run our company offsites end to end: location, budget, travel and visas, agenda, and logistics.
Organize other company events and moments that matter for a remote team, both virtual and in person.
Help build and protect a healthy, high-performance culture: rituals, recognition, internal communication, and listening to how the team is really doing (engagement surveys, stay interviews, exit interviews).
Take on cross-functional projects for the founders where a people-minded operator is the right person to drive them.
What success looks like
In your first 90 days:
You have audited all current contracts and worker classifications and fixed or flagged every compliance gap.
Onboarding and offboarding run from a documented checklist, not from founders' memories.
A structured hiring process is live and hiring managers are using it for every open role.
The founders spend materially less time on people administration.
In your first 12 months:
A compensation framework with levels and bands is in place and used for every offer and review.
We have scaled headcount significantly with a strong quality bar and a good candidate experience.
At least one successful company offsite has taken place.
A first performance review cycle has been completed.
The scope and job description for a dedicated recruiting role are ready.
What we are looking for
Must-haves:
5+ years in People Operations, HR, or a People generalist role, including at least 3 years at a fast-growing startup or scale-up.
Highly organized, discreet, and comfortable owning many moving parts with little supervision.
Hands-on experience employing people across multiple countries, using an EOR or global HRIS platform such as Deel, Remote, Rippling, or Oyster.
Working knowledge of employee, EOR vs. contractor classification and the practical differences in labor law across jurisdictions — and the judgment to know when to call counsel.
Proven experience running recruiting end to end, ideally including technical hiring.
Experience designing or running a compensation framework.
Excellent written and spoken English. Our company language is English, and much of this role is written communication.
A builder's mindset: you prefer creating a simple process that works over waiting for the perfect one.
Nice to have:
Experience at a remote-first company or a B2B software company.
Experience organizing international events or offsites, including travel and visa logistics.
HR certification (e.g., SHRM, CIPD) or a legal background.
Working hours and location
This is a fully remote role. We are hiring people who live in Latin America, with a preference for the UTC-3 time zone. Our team is distributed across several time zones, so we ask for a reliable daily overlap of at least three hours with colleagues in Europe and further east, which in practice means starting early in your local day.
You will be engaged through Deel, either as an employee or as a contractor depending on your country of residence.
What we offer
Compensation: $36k - $48k annually, depending on experience.
Equity in IOMETE.
A fully remote setup with flexible working hours within the overlap window.
Direct access to and partnership with the founders, and real ownership of a function you will build from the ground up.
The opportunity to grow with the company as the People function grows.
Our hiring process
Interview with Piet, Co-Founder & COO (45 minutes)
Interview with one or two hiring managers (30 minutes each)
Interview with Vusal, Co-founder & CEO (30 minutes)
Reference checks and offer
We aim to complete the process within four weeks and will keep you informed at every step.
IOMETE is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applicants of every background and evaluate every candidate on their skills, experience, and potential.
Originally posted on Himalayas
