---
title: 'Head of People at Ultra'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-people-ultra-brooklyn-g8frrbpfpq6d'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-14'
---

# Head of People at Ultra

- **Company:** Ultra
- **Location:** Brooklyn, NY
- **Compensation:** $175k–$240k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-08-03
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-14
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/ultra/am9icG9zdDqBMCcymtdkcb8kbarorGe-

## Job description

## About the Role

Ultra is growing from a small team into a powerful organization. Over the next 18 months, we’ll more than double the team, open additional locations, and build the management systems that will support hundreds of employees over time. We’re looking for the person who will build that foundation.

This isn’t a traditional HR leadership role. There isn’t a recruiting organization to inherit, an established People team to manage, or mature systems to optimize. You’ll build the recruiting engine, establish our people operations, design compensation programs, help shape our culture, and advise the founders on some of the hardest organizational decisions we’ll make. You’ll work directly with the CEO and leadership team, and your work will touch every person who joins Ultra.

It’s also a uniquely complex environment. Our workforce spans ML researchers, robotics engineers, field technicians, operators, and corporate staff across multiple states and countries. Some employees are salaried, some are hourly, and some are contractors.

Location: This is a on-site role based in New York City.

## What You’ll Do

- Build a world-class recruiting function: Hiring is your highest-leverage responsibility. You’ll own recruiting strategy, process, and execution across engineering, research, operations, and go-to-market.
- Create the operating system for our people function: Implement and own HRIS, payroll, benefits, onboarding, performance reviews, immigration, compliance, and everything else required to support a rapidly growing company.
- Design compensation and career progression: Own leveling, salary bands, equity refreshes, promotions, and performance cycles. Help ensure we can attract exceptional talent while maintaining fairness and discipline as we scale.

## Who You Are

- You've gone from 0 to 1, and 1 to 10 before. You know what it’s like to join a company before the playbook exists and create the systems yourself.
- You care deeply about recruiting. You know that great companies are built one exceptional hire at a time, and you’re excited to spend meaningful time on it.
- You have strong judgment. You know when a company needs process and when process gets in the way.
- Most importantly, you’re someone employees trust and can help design and grow our culture.

## Experience and Skills

- Built or led the People function at a high-growth startup, ideally scaling from tens to hundreds.
- Personally recruited exceptional technical talent.
- Experience supporting organizations with physical operations—hardware, manufacturing, logistics, field service, or similar.
- Deep understanding of compensation, leveling, equity, and performance management in venture-backed companies.
- Experience implementing HR systems, payroll, benefits, and employment infrastructure.

## About Ultra

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Ultra builds practical, general-purpose industrial AI robots that automate repetitive warehouse tasks like packing, sorting, and kitting, with zero integration and rapid deployment.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage; $625K total funding)
- **Headquarters**: New York, NY, United States
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Jon Miller Schwartz (CEO), Max Friefeld (COO), Chetan Parthiban (Co-Founder & Chief Scientist), Oliver Ortlieb (Co-Founder & CTO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Robotics Engineering / Industrial Automation
- **Target customers**: B2B – warehouses, fulfillment centers, and logistics operators (enterprise and SMB)
- **Mission or purpose**: To deploy practical, general-purpose robots that generate immediate ROI by handling repetitive, high‑volume work, and to scale intelligence through real‑world data.

## Products & Services
- **[Operator](https://www.ultra.tech/)**: A stationary industrial AI robot designed for e‑commerce order packaging, sorting, and kitting. It operates up to 24 hours a day, requires no fixed infrastructure, installs in hours, and covers a 5×5 ft footprint with a 10 ft vertical reach. The robot learns new tasks from example data and improves fleet‑wide as more units are deployed.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding of $625K (Seed: $125K in Aug 2024; Pre‑Seed: $500K in Sep 2024 led by Y Combinator)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Y Combinator (lead investor), three additional investors in Pre‑Seed round
- **Growth Signals**: 14 total employees (as of early 2025), 19 employees (latest) – **333% YoY headcount growth**; robots already deployed in real warehouses generating revenue and data; launched the Operator robot in April 2026 with 184 LinkedIn reactions; actively hiring across engineering, research, deployment, and people operations.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Zero‑integration deployment**: Robots can be rolled in, plugged in, and turned on within hours – no expensive infrastructure or lengthy integration.
- **Stationary, safe design**: No tipping risk, no battery swaps, no charging breaks – designed for continuous operation in real warehouse conditions.
- **AI trained with examples**: Uses neural nets trained on teleoperation data (≈2 hours) to learn new tasks, enabling rapid adaptation to variable items and changing workflows.
- **Fleet learning**: Every deployed robot feeds data back to improve the entire fleet – a data‑scale moat that compounds with more deployments.

## Strategic Focus
- Rapidly scale deployments across the US in 2025‑2026, building on proven field traction.
- Continue improving robot foundation models for faster, more robust task learning and execution.
- Expand from e‑commerce packaging into adjacent warehouse workflows (e.g., kitting, returns).
- Grow the team (targeting engineering, research, deployment, and people functions) to support production scaling.

## Why Work Here
- **Early‑stage impact**: Join a YC‑backed startup founded by three‑time entrepreneurs (previously founded Layer By Layer, Voodoo Manufacturing) with a decade of collaboration.
- **Fast‑paced, hands‑on culture**: Engineers and researchers directly own firmware, hardware, ML models, and deployment – from design to field support.
- **Real‑world robotics**: Work on robots that are already generating revenue in customer warehouses, not just lab prototypes.
- **Growth trajectory**: 333% headcount growth in the past year, with ambitious plans to scale from 19 to hundreds of employees.
- **Location & flexibility**: Based in New York City; roles span HQ (assembly, testing, R&D) and field deployment across the US.
- **Open roles** (as of early 2026): Robotics Firmware Engineer, Robotics Hardware Engineer, Data Operations Lead, Research Scientist, Product Engineer, Deployment Engineer, Head of People – offering broad ownership and career growth.

## Sources
1. [ultra.tech](https://www.ultra.tech/)
2. [Y Combinator – Ultra](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/ultra)
3. [Built In – Ultra Company Profile](https://builtin.com/company/ultra-ultra-tech)
4. [Built In – Ultra Jobs](https://builtin.com/company/ultra-ultra-tech/jobs)
5. [LinkedIn – Ultra](https://www.linkedin.com/company/ultraroboticsco)

## Other roles at Ultra

- [Senior Software Infrastructure Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-infrastructure-engineer-ultra-brooklyn-cag4a9js5h01) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Product Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/product-engineer-ultra-brooklyn-292bdydcv44s) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Research Scientist / Research Engineer (Intern)](https://feeny.ai/job/research-scientist-research-engineer-intern-ultra-brooklyn-0t1bvtfpqw94) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Head of Marketing](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-marketing-ultra-brooklyn-rarz21rtmbav) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Head of Customer Operations](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-customer-operations-ultra-brooklyn-yjsm4ykqs5f5) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Data Operations Associate](https://feeny.ai/job/data-operations-associate-ultra-brooklyn-fwe9qb9nk4xe) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Founding Product Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-product-manager-ultra-brooklyn-4tb57rm0cymn) — Brooklyn, NY
- [Head of Finance](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-finance-ultra-brooklyn-rtaykzbf200b) — Brooklyn, NY
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- [Supply Chain and Procurement Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/supply-chain-and-procurement-lead-ultra-brooklyn-p1brfk2ye8wc) — Brooklyn, NY