Director of HR

Launch Potato is about 200 people, profitable, and growing. The performance management system that got us here was built by our SVP of Talent, and he still runs it. That system becomes yours.

You're inheriting something that works. There's a levels framework, a rating scale, a calibration process, and managers who have been through several cycles. It got us to 200 people. Your job is deciding what carries forward and change-managing the rest, across an org that moves fast and adopts new processes.

We want someone who'll find the version that works and then hold it there while the company gets good at it. 

If you want to own a function, make it extraordinary, and be judged on whether it actually got better, keep reading.

• Real ownership, immediately. Performance, total rewards, and compliance are yours to own rather than support. You'll defend a compensation number in front of a CFO who checks it.
• An SVP who wants to hand this over. Not one who says that and then rewrites your deck. The explicit goal is that the HR function runs without him.
• Executive reach by default. Calibration and leveling decisions live with the C-suite, and you present your own work. You won't spend year one convincing anyone that performance management matters.
• Leverage is part of the mandate, not a side project. We are tech-first and AI-forward, which means we can run lean teams and do more with less. You'll push that further, build the tooling managers actually open, and make everything easier without taking substance out of it. Nobody will ask you to do it the slow way.

From Kris Osborne, SVP of Talent.

I'll tell you what I want and what the constraints are and then get out of the way. I don't rewrite people's work. If I disagree with where you landed you'll hear it from me early, and if you still think you're right then push back, because I'd rather change my mind than have you go quiet and build something you don't believe in.

I ask before I decide. When something changes the shape of this team the people on it hear it from me first and they get a real say in it, not a heads up after it's done.

I care about the outcome and I'm not going to do your job for you. Bring me a problem and I'll work it with you, but I'm not going to take it off your plate and hand it back finished.

I'm hiring this seat because I want someone we can all learn from. Bring me a better answer than mine and I'll take it.

All required.

• A full performance cycle you owned end to end, not supported. Owned more than once, at 150 people or more. Design, timeline, manager prep, calibration, rollout, retro.
• Compensation and benefits you've owned. Band design, benchmarking methodology, benefits renewals, the annual comp cycle. You can defend a number to a CFO.
• HR compliance as standing scope, not as a project. Multi-state registration, I-9, handbook, classification, postings. You've inherited a backlog and cleared it.
• A people system that outlasted you. Built, adopted, and still recognizable two cycles later.
• Leverage you built that people adopted. You've automated or rebuilt part of a people process so it ran faster, the quality held or improved, and the team actually used it. Adoption is the test here, the same way durability is the test above.
• Experience taking a company our size to materially larger, on headcount or revenue, more than once. You know what breaks first at the next stage because you've watched it break.
• Empowered your team to raise the bar. You have clear examples of coaching, mentoring, and growing a team that created extraordinary outcomes.

This is a player-coach seat. Managers here lead a team and deliver work personally, at every level.

• You have opinions about what performance management gets wrong, and specific examples of what you changed
• You can tell a process problem from a manager-capability problem, and you fix the right one
• You're the person who says the uncomfortable thing in a calibration room

Performance management. The mid-year and annual cycles end to end: design, timeline, communication, execution. What the cycle needs to produce and what to cut. A timeline published early enough that managers plan around it. The retro after each one, and the judgment about when a change is warranted and when to leave it alone.

Total rewards. Band design and the benchmarking methodology behind it. Benefits renewals and the economics underneath them. The annual comp cycle, with leveling and pay kept connected.

Compliance. Multi-state registration, I-9, handbook, classification, postings. The current backlog, plus the escalation and coverage protocols that follow it.

Manager enablement. Preparing managers for real performance conversations, including the one where someone rated themselves higher than their manager did. The calibration process, including where two managers apply the same bar differently. Playbooks and self-service resources so a manager gets an answer without booking a meeting. Standing support for the roughly three dozen front-line managers who get it reactively today.

Leverage and tooling. Finding the parts of everything above that shouldn't be done by hand, and fixing them. Building what a manager will actually open rather than what looks good in a demo. Taking time out of the cycle while the conversations get better rather than thinner.

The team. An HR Business Partner and a Total Rewards and People Analytics lead. Both are strong at what they do and both have room to grow. You set their decision rights: where they decide, where they recommend, where it comes to you.

In your first year:

• The annual cycle ships on your timeline and you own it
• Managers are calibrated before the cycle rather than corrected after it
• Every person leaving a check-in has one clear thing to work on, and the conversation that produced it was a real one
• The compliance backlog is closed and stays closed
• The cycle costs managers less time than the year before, and the conversations are better rather than thinner
• Your two reports hold more decision authority than they did at the start

• This would be your first Director-level people role
• You lead with policy and risk. Compliance is required here and it isn't the center of the work
• You want to redesign the cycle every year
• You see tooling and automation as somebody else's job
• You're looking for a recruiting role. Recruiting sits elsewhere in the function