---
title: 'Head of People at Equal1'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-people-equal1-dublin-8gn89h2vb4gq'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-05'
---

# Head of People at Equal1

- **Company:** Equal1
- **Location:** Dublin, Ireland
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-04-03
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-05
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/equal1/3ba73555-e607-4473-8d1d-a286b39b4755

## Job description

Equal1 is a fast-growing quantum computing company operating across Ireland, the Netherlands, Romania, the US, and Canada. We are looking for an experienced, hands-on HR leader to take ownership of the HR function and help us scale: building on processes already in place, partnering with external consultants, and creating a consistent employee experience across multiple jurisdictions.

As Head of People, you will shape the culture, leadership capability, and people experience of Equal1 as we scale a world-leading, high-growth deep tech company over the next 18 months.

## MAIN DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

## HR FOUNDATIONS & SCALING

- Develop and continuously improve scalable HR foundations, including core processes, templates, and policies, appropriate for a high-growth technology company operating across multiple jurisdictions.
- Ensure HR compliance fundamentals are robust and audit-ready (right-to-work, data privacy/GDPR, mandatory training where applicable, employee relations processes, and required record keeping).
- Lead the evolution of compensation foundations, including salary bands/levelling, location-based benchmarking, internal equity, and annual review cycles.
- Establish a simple, high-signal people metrics cadence (hiring funnel health, time-to-hire, retention, onboarding completion, engagement indicators) to support leadership decision-making.
- Own HR systems and data governance, ensuring strong data quality, reporting, access controls, and compliant handling of employee data.

## EMPLOYEE LIFECYCLE & MANAGER SUPPORT

- Partner closely with managers as a trusted advisor, equipping them to lead effectively through practical coaching on feedback, documentation, fair process, and clear communication.
- Implement and run a lightweight performance and development framework (goal setting, reviews, calibration, promotions), providing a practical manager toolkit to enable consistency and fairness.
- Own and continuously improve the end-to-end employee experience across the full lifecycle, from onboarding and probation through role/contract changes and offboarding, ensuring a consistent, high-quality and compliant approach across jurisdictions.
- Help shape and scale Equal1’s culture and ways of working across distributed teams, strengthening internal communications and reinforcing a high-performance, values-led environment.

## HIRING OPERATIONS & WORKFORCE PLANNING

- Own and continuously improve the recruitment process as we scale the team, partnering with hiring managers and leveraging our external recruiting support to ensure a consistent, efficient end-to-end hiring experience.
- Partner with Finance and leadership on headcount planning, hiring budgets, approvals, and tracking.
- Maintain hiring governance: offer process, compensation alignment, approvals, contract issuance, and onboarding readiness.
- Coordinate work permits, relocations and cross-border hires with external providers; track renewals and compliance.

## HR OPERATIONS ACROSS MULTIPLE JURISDICTIONS

- Own day-to-day HR operations across five jurisdictions, ensuring compliant and consistent practices while adapting to local requirements
- Coordinate with external legal/HR advisors on employment contracts, templates, policy updates, renewals, and contract reviews.
- Manage HR documentation and data integrity (contracts, amendments, policies, employee files)
- Manage contractor/EOR engagements (onboarding, renewals, offboarding) in partnership with Finance/Legal, ensuring correct classification and documentation

## PAYROLL, BENEFITS AND VENDOR MANAGEMENT

- Lead the set-up and ongoing management of benefits across jurisdictions
- Establish clear internal processes for changes (joiners/leavers, salary changes, allowances, bonus inputs) to ensure accurate payroll execution.
- Manage relationships with external providers for payroll and HR administration (including local payroll partners/EOR).

## EXPERIENCE AND QUALIFICATIONS

## REQUIRED

- 5+ years of progressive HR / People Operations experience, ideally in a scaling tech or R&D environment.
- Experience working with Irish employment legislation and HR compliance requirements.
- Demonstrated experience managing HR across multiple countries/jurisdictions, with strong comfort coordinating external legal, payroll and benefits providers.
- Strong working knowledge of employment contracts and HR compliance fundamentals
- Experience partnering closely with Finance (budgets, headcount planning, approvals, compensation inputs).
- Excellent communication skills, sound judgement, and high discretion with confidential information.
- Highly organised, resourceful, and comfortable operating with ambiguity and minimal supervision.

## DESIRED

- Experience building HR processes from “early stage” to “repeatable and scalable”.
- Experience supporting recruiting operations and vendor management (agencies, contractors, embedded recruiters).
- Experience working across additional jurisdictions we operate in (Netherlands, Romania, the US, and Canada) is a strong plus.

## About Equal1

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Equal1 builds the world's first rack-mounted silicon quantum computers designed to deploy alongside classical CPUs and GPUs in standard data center infrastructure.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A, last raised $60M in January 2026)
- **Headquarters**: Dublin 4, Ireland (with offices in Fremont, CA; Delft, Netherlands; Sherbrooke, Canada; Timișoara, Romania)
- **Founded**: 2017
- **Founders**: Dirk Leipold (President & Co-Founder), R. Bogdan Staszewski (Co-Founder)

## Core Business
- **Primary Industry**: Quantum Computing / Nanotechnology / High-Performance Computing
- **Target Customers**: Enterprise and government data centers, HPC clusters, AI labs, defense and aerospace organizations (current customer includes the European Space Agency)
- **Mission Statement**: "Quantum will not deliver from the lab. It delivers when it becomes deployable: infrastructure that can be bought, run, scaled and trusted inside high-performance compute environments."

## Products & Services
- **Equal1 RacQ**: A rack-mounted silicon quantum computer that fits into a standard server rack with standard power and cooling. It runs alongside existing CPU/GPU infrastructure and supports hybrid quantum-classical workloads. Currently shipping to customers.
- **UnityQ**: The silicon quantum processor (QSoC - Quantum System-on-Chip) built in standard CMOS foundries. Each generation adds more qubits, higher fidelity, and exponential compute within the same rack footprint.
- **Quantum Solutions**: Capabilities for optimization (logistics, portfolio, scheduling), simulation (molecular systems, materials science), Monte Carlo (risk, pricing, modeling), and Quantum AI (training paths beyond classical scaling).

## Market Standing
- **Total Funding**: $106.5M across 12 rounds (last round: $60M in January 2026 led by Ireland Strategic Investment Fund)
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Notable Investors**: Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, Matterwave Ventures, Atlantic Bridge, Enterprise Ireland, Elkstone Partners, EIC Fund
- **Key Partnership**: Signed a deal with **Nvidia** (September 2024) for hybrid supercomputer and quantum systems
- **Growth Signals**: 
  - RacQ already shipping to customers including the **European Space Agency**
  - Headcount growing 15.6% YoY (38 employees as of mid-2026)
  - Opened Dutch lab in 2024, partnered with TNO (Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research)
  - 34 patents filed in quantum information science
  - Multiple generations of silicon already proven

## Competitive Advantages
- **Silicon CMOS Advantage**: Unlike other qubit modalities (superconducting, ion trap, photonic) that require exotic manufacturing, Equal1 builds in standard silicon foundries — making their chips manufacturable, deployable, and upgradeable at scale.
- **Rack-Mounted Form Factor**: The only quantum computer that fits in a standard data center rack with standard power and cooling — no cryogenic infrastructure or dedicated quantum facility required.
- **Deployed Today, Not "Soon"**: RacQ is already shipping to paying customers, including a major space agency.
- **Nvidia Partnership**: Direct integration with the dominant AI/HPC ecosystem.

## Strategic Focus
- Scaling qubit count and fidelity with each UnityQ processor generation
- Deepening hybrid quantum-classical compute integration with Nvidia
- Expanding commercial deployments into optimization, simulation, and AI workloads
- Building out the software stack and framework engineering team
- Growing headcount in engineering, quantum error correction, device physics, and software roles

## Why Work Here
- **Work Environment**: "Hybrid by default" — employees work across offices in Ireland, Netherlands, US, Canada, and Romania
- **Culture**: Rated 5.0/5.0 on employer review sites (Work-Life: 5.0, Compensation: 5.0, Culture: 5.0, Career: 5.0)
- **Team**: Small (~38 people), highly technical (26% technical, 15% research), with talent from Intel (5 alumni), University College Dublin (7), TNO, Qualcomm, and Movidius
- **Impact**: You'd be building deployable quantum infrastructure that's already shipping — not just doing research
- **Career Growth**: Open roles include VP of Quantum Software Engineering, Quantum Error Correction Lead, Senior Verification Engineer, Spin Qubit Calibration Engineer — indicating serious scaling of the engineering team
- **Notable**: Employees have gone on to Stanford, PsiQuantum, Qualcomm — showing the team is deeply embedded in the quantum ecosystem

## Sources
1. [equal1.com](https://www.equal1.com/)
2. [equal1.com/company](https://www.equal1.com/company)
3. [LinkedIn - Equal1](https://www.linkedin.com/company/equal1)
4. [CB Insights - Equal1](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/equal1labs)
5. [Jobs.ashbyhq.com/equal1](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/equal1)

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- [Software Stack / Framework Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/software-stack-framework-engineer-equal1-timisoara-qk5b0hh4385x) — Timișoara, Romania
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- [Spin Qubit Calibration Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/spin-qubit-calibration-engineer-equal1-delft-d0attrhvmsm6) — Delft, Netherlands
- [Head of People](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-people-anterior-new-york-5zykv8dw1xzn) — New York, NY