Luxury Beauty
Head of People & Operations
A high-growth international business is seeking a versatile and highly organised leader to own the intersection of people, operations, and executive strategy — acting as the operational backbone of the company and a trusted partner to senior leadership.
The Role
This is a broad, senior hybrid role spanning HR, people operations, and day-to-day business operations. You will lead the full employee lifecycle across a global team, keep operations running seamlessly, and work closely with the COO on the initiatives that move the business forward. On any given day you might be onboarding new hires across multiple countries, resolving a vendor issue, refining a people policy, and preparing a leadership briefing. You thrive on breadth, move fluidly between hands-on execution and strategic thinking, and are trusted with confidential information at the highest level.
Responsibilities
- Lead onboarding and offboarding across a global team — contracts, background checks, equipment, systems access, and a smooth first-week experience regardless of country or time zone
- Coordinate employment across international entities, contractors, and Employer-of-Record providers, maintaining compliance across jurisdictions
- Own the full employee lifecycle: HRIS records, PTO, benefits administration, and payroll coordination with finance
- Draft, maintain, and enforce people policies and the employee handbook, keeping the business aligned with local employment law in each region
- Serve as the first point of contact for employee relations, handling sensitive matters with discretion, fairness, and confidentiality
- Partner with hiring managers on recruiting logistics, interview coordination, and a consistent candidate experience
- Manage day-to-day office and facilities operations, vendor relationships, contracts, and the operations budget
- Administer core business tools and SaaS subscriptions — licences, access, and spend
- Build and document repeatable, scalable processes and improve them as the business grows
- Design and run employee engagement programmes — surveys, pulse checks, recognition initiatives, and wellbeing frameworks
- Manage the flow of information to and from the COO's office and prepare company communications, all-hands meetings, and operational reporting
- Enable managers as the front line of engagement through training, feedback tools, and support for first-time leaders
Requirements
- 5+ years across HR, people operations, and leadership support — ideally in a growing business of 50–200 people
- Experience supporting global or distributed teams, including onboarding across countries and working with EOR or international payroll providers
- Working knowledge of HR fundamentals and multi-jurisdiction employment and compliance basics
- Exceptional organisation and prioritisation — comfortable owning multiple workstreams simultaneously without losing the detail
- Strong, clear communication and the emotional intelligence to handle sensitive people matters with care
- Proven discretion with confidential information at leadership level
- Fluency with modern tools — HRIS, collaboration suites, project management platforms, and comfort adopting new systems
- A bias for action: you identify what needs doing and get it done, while knowing when to escalate
- HR certification (e.g. SHRM-CP/PHR) or equivalent experience is advantageous
- Additional languages relevant to the regions the business operates in are a bonus
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