---
title: 'Chief People Officer at Ocient Inc.'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/chief-people-officer-ocient-inc-united-states-k4w9cpeb0g9n'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Chief People Officer at Ocient Inc.

- **Company:** Ocient Inc.
- **Location:** United States
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-08-10
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/ocient-inc-/am9icG9zdDo_3FuX91jmFcxX6zy1Weqt

## Job description

Job Title: Chief People Officer Location: 100% Remote (US Based Only)

- We cannot sponsor or transfer any visas, of any kind, at this time* Reports To: Chief Executive Officer Estimated salary range: $275,000 to $350,000
- The salary offered for this position will be based on a candidate’s experience and skill demonstrated during interviews and other evaluations

Position Overview: The Chief People Officer is a C-suite executive and key architect of Ocient’s people strategy during a defining growth phase. Reporting directly to the CEO, the CPO will build the talent infrastructure, culture, and leadership capability needed to scale from a high-velocity startup into a durable, high-performance organization. This is a hands-on, highly visible role for an operator who thrives in ambiguity, moves fast, and knows how to build people programs that actually accelerate the business — not slow it down.

The right candidate has been a senior people leader at a growth-stage technology company, understands the pace and complexity of scaling through rapid headcount growth, restructuring, or M&A, and brings the credibility and judgment to counsel the CEO and executive team on all people matters.

Core Responsibilities:

Executive Partnership & People Strategy

- Serve as a trusted advisor and strategic partner to the CEO and executive team, translating business strategy into a forward-looking people roadmap with clear priorities, owners, and milestones — revisited quarterly as conditions shift
- Bring a founder’s mindset to people strategy: think in systems, move with urgency, and build for scale without over-engineering
- Champion company culture — internally and externally — preserving the high-ownership, high-trust values of a startup while professionalizing the organization for the next stage of growth
- Serve as a visible advocate for Ocient’s people brand in recruiting markets, investor conversations, and the broader tech ecosystem
- Lead workforce planning, org design, and headcount modeling in close partnership with the CEO and functional leaders — anticipating growth needs 6–12 months out

Organizational Development & Leadership

- Design and implement leadership development, onboarding, and performance frameworks that build a high-performance culture without bureaucracy
- Build and mentor a lean, high-performing HR/People team — leveling up existing talent and making targeted hires as the business scales
- Drive org design decisions that improve accountability, reduce friction, and enable the company to move faster

Total Rewards & People Operations

- Own total rewards strategy, including competitive compensation benchmarking, benefits, incentive programs, and equity — with deep expertise in pre-IPO equity structures (options/RSUs)
- Oversee the full employee lifecycle: onboarding, development, performance, retention, and offboarding
- Implement and optimize HRIS and people analytics tools to drive data-informed decisions; define and report on key people metrics to the CEO and Board
- Manage employee relations, investigations, and conflict resolution with speed and discretion

Compliance & Risk

- Ensure compliance with federal, state, and local employment laws across multiple jurisdictions, developing scalable policies that meet legal requirements without unnecessary process
- Partner with legal counsel on employment matters, contractor classification, and risk mitigation
- Oversee regulatory reporting and filings (EEO, FMLA, ADA, FLSA, etc.)

Ideal Qualifications:

- 12–18+ years of progressive HR/People experience, with at least 5–7 years at the VP, SVP, or CPO level
- Proven growth-stage operator: you’ve been a senior people leader at a high-growth technology company — ideally through a period of 2x–5x+ headcount scaling, restructuring, or M&A — and you know what it takes to build people infrastructure at speed
- Player-coach profile: you’ve operated at C-suite or VP level and still do the work yourself — writing JDs, running interviews, managing ER cases, pulling comp analyses. You don’t wait for a team
- Data-driven mindset: you use people metrics to make decisions, communicate business impact, and prioritize your team’s work
- Total rewards expertise: deep experience in compensation benchmarking, benefits strategy, and pre-IPO equity (options/RSUs)
- Multi-state and/or global HR experience: comfortable managing people programs across multiple jurisdictions and regulatory environments
- Executive-level credibility: proven ability to partner with CEOs, Boards, and investors on sensitive people matters and organizational decisions
- Business and financial acumen: experienced with headcount planning, budgeting, and making the financial case for people investments
- Bachelor’s degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, Organizational Development, or a related field; Master’s or MBA preferred; or equivalent experience

An Exceptional Candidate Will Have:

- Experience at a company that has navigated a significant inflection point: Series C+ fundraise, pre-IPO readiness, acquisition, or rapid geographic expansion
- Background in data infrastructure, enterprise software, or deep tech — you understand what it takes to hire and retain rare technical talent
- Experience in a company selling into government, defense, or intelligence sectors (familiarity with clearance considerations a plus)
- Executive HR certification such as SHRM-SCP or SPHR

## About Ocient Inc.

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Ocient delivers OcientAIQ, a unified data platform that brings trusted agentic AI directly to petabyte-scale enterprise data without moving it across fragmented systems.
- **Entity Type**: Private (venture-backed) – total funding $156.5M
- **Headquarters**: Chicago, Illinois, United States
- **Founded**: 2016
- **Founders**: Greg Papadopoulos (Co-Founder & VP of Customer Success & Quality), Joe Jablonski (Co-Founder & Chief Solutions Officer)

## Core Business
- Primary industries: Data & AI software, large-scale data analytics, agentic AI infrastructure
- Target customers: B2B Enterprise – organizations with massive datasets (government, national security, financial services, telecom, energy)
- Mission: “To deliver trusted agentic AI solutions that work in production at petabyte scale – helping the organizations doing the most consequential work in the world realize the full value of their data.”

## Products & Services
- **OcientAIQ™**: Complete ecosystem for building and deploying trusted agentic AI solutions at petabyte scale. Brings AI directly to data with built-in governance, compliance, and deployment options. Handles structured and semi-structured data in a single platform. (SaaS / platform)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed (private company)
- **Key Metric**: Annual revenue ~$60M; total funding $156.5M (Series A, Series B, debt financing)
- **Notable Investors**: Greycroft, OCA Ventures, In-Q-Tel, Buoyant Ventures, TechNexus Venture Collaborative
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount 185 (+33.3% YoY); actively hiring with 10 open positions (+900% YoY in job postings); remote-first global workforce across 11 countries; carbon-neutral operations including LEED-certified data center; LinkedIn followers grew 29.6% YoY

## Competitive Advantages
- Founded by the team that built Cleversafe (acquired by IBM) – deep domain expertise in petabyte-scale data systems
- Purpose-built for organizations that cannot afford AI errors (national security, critical infrastructure)
- Unified platform eliminates data movement, reducing cost and latency at extreme scale
- Built-in trust and compliance controls for regulated industries
- Remote-first, carbon-neutral culture attracts top engineering talent

## Strategic Focus
- Scaling OcientAIQ ecosystem for enterprise adoption
- Expanding agentic AI capabilities (trusted, production-ready)
- Continuing international growth (India, Canada, Europe, Singapore)
- Heavy investment in engineering talent: open roles in distributed systems, ML, geospatial, SRE, QA automation, product management

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Craft-driven, autonomous, collaborative, inclusive, and ethical. “We are industry-leading experts … driven to deliver the best and brightest solutions.”
- **Work model**: Remote-first – team distributed across 11 countries
- **Impact**: Work on problems that protect networks, secure nations, and power the global economy
- **Compensation**: Sr. Software Engineer ~$172K/year; Software Engineer I ~$97K/year (LinkedIn data)
- **Perks**: Carbon-neutral operations, LEED-certified data center, commitment to UN Sustainable Development Goals
- **Rating**: 4.1/5.0 on LinkedIn (35 reviews) – culture and career score 4.2, work-life 4.1
- **Notable alumni destinations**: Google, Amazon, MongoDB, Citadel Securities

## Sources
1. [ocient.com/careers](https://ocient.com/careers/)
2. [linkedin.com/company/ocient](https://linkedin.com/company/ocient)
3. [ocient.com/about-ocient](https://ocient.com/about-ocient/)
4. [jobs.gem.com/ocient-inc-](https://jobs.gem.com/ocient-inc-)

## Other roles at Ocient Inc.

- [Technical Writer](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-writer-ocient-inc-united-states-vbd5jg6xna2p) — United States
- [VP of Sales, National Security Solutions (ONSS)](https://feeny.ai/job/vp-of-sales-national-security-solutions-onss-ocient-inc-united-states-vhwqx15tj4gt) — United States
- [Senior Software Engineer - Geospatial](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-geospatial-ocient-inc-united-states-5fbtmsk5bjah) — United States
- [Senior Software Engineer - Machine Learning](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-machine-learning-ocient-inc-united-states-17f8dd2gr4rv) — United States
- [Senior Solutions Architect, CSP (Europe)](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-solutions-architect-csp-europe-ocient-inc-united-kingdom-europe-7vw0gjfh8y82) — United Kingdom / Europe
- [Senior Solutions Architect, CSP](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-solutions-architect-csp-ocient-inc-united-states-nth5e31f4fv7) — United States
- [Senior Product Manager - Database](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-product-manager-database-ocient-inc-united-states-wqh00cb9871x) — United States
- [Chief People Officer](https://feeny.ai/job/chief-people-officer-golden-pet-brands-el-segundo-ca-and-or-burbank-north-rdz88r6rgneg) — El Segundo CA And/or Burbank/north Hollywood, CA