---
title: 'HR & People Operations Lead at Airbound'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/hr-people-operations-lead-airbound-bengaluru-4n2qh7aca79y'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-15'
---

# HR & People Operations Lead at Airbound

- **Company:** Airbound
- **Location:** Bengaluru, India
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-10-08
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-15
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/airbound/89245e1d-ac11-4458-ab68-8b3896b468cb

## Job description

## About Airbound

Our mission is to make a world where everyone has access to delivery. Where goods move as freely as information moves today. This is possible. Today the cost of moving on a scooter is ₹2/km. That’s the cost of moving a 150kg mass from point A to B. We’re bringing that mass down to less than 5kgs, concurrently bringing the cost down to 10 paise/km. This is how we make deliveries a reality. This is how we create a world where we’re doing billions of deliveries per day. The tech is not there. The current cost of drone delivery is ₹100/km. We need to completely redefine the way things are done here. We’re building the world’s most efficient aircraft from the ground-up, and scaling that up to beyond anything the aerospace sector has ever seen. This cannot be an iterative process. We have to tear down all conventions and build everything up from scratch. To do this, we need nothing less than the best engineers. The ones who care about building something fundamentally different, who are deeply curious about understanding the fundamentals of everything they’re working on, who are dreamers that believe in the impossible.

## About the Role

The HR & People Operations Lead owns the entire people function at Airbound and the team that runs it. You will lead and grow two people, our Talent Acquisition Manager and our HR Business Partner, and you are accountable for everything they deliver: how we hire, how people ramp, how they're led and rewarded, and how the whole organization scales. This is a leadership role. You set the people strategy, build the systems, own the budget and headcount plan, and are the senior escalation point for both recruiting and people-partnering. You will work directly with the founders and leadership to build an organization that can go from 150 people to many times that without losing the speed and ownership that make us work. Hands-on where it counts: as an early team, you will roll up your sleeves wherever your two reports need backup, but your primary job is to lead the function, not to run the desk.

## Key Responsibilities

- Lead, coach, and grow the people team, setting their goals and holding the bar on execution
- Own the overall people strategy and translate the company's scaling plan into a hiring, org, and culture roadmap
- Be accountable for outcomes across both functions: hiring velocity and quality from TA, and performance, retention, and employee relations from the HRBP
- Own workforce and headcount planning with the leadership team, and manage the people budget
- Own campus recruiting as a strategic talent channel: set the target-school and early-career strategy, build the university and placement-cell partnerships that feed the pipeline, and hold TA accountable for internship-to-full-time conversion and new-grad quality
- Build and own the people operating system (policies, compensation frameworks, compliance, and HR data) so the function runs cleanly as the team scales across locations
- Set the standard for culture and act as a trusted advisor to leadership on sensitive and high-stakes people decisions
- Keep a real pulse on the whole organization's health and act early, before small problems become big ones
- Step in hands-on wherever the team needs support, especially while the function is still being built

## Qualifications

Must-Have

- 8+ years in HR, people operations, or talent, including experience leading and developing a people team, ideally in fast-paced engineering-first hardware or manufacturing environments
- Track record owning a people function end to end, across both talent acquisition and HR/people operations, not just one side
- Experience building and scaling HR and recruiting systems from scratch, not just running ones that already exist
- Sharp judgment: you flag hiring risks, team gaps, and critical people issues in real time, before they become problems
- Strong people leadership: you set direction, coach your team, and handle sensitive employee relations with fairness and discretion
- Highly disciplined and process-driven, with a bias toward clean documentation and tight operational control
- Excellent communication, documentation, and cross-functional collaboration skills
- Comfortable with Google Suite, Notion, and other collaboration tools

Good to Have

- Previous experience building and leading a people function from nothing at an early-stage startup
- Understanding of the hardware, manufacturing, or aerospace talent landscape and what it takes to hire, grow, and retain that talent

Work location: Hoskote, Bangalore (Headquarters)

## #LI-AR1

## What We Offer

- Comprehensive health insurance to keep you and your loved ones covered
- Relocation assistance and a daily travel stipend to ease your commute
- Advanced salary credit to support you when you need it

“A driven, passionate team where you’ll have room to grow and thrive - this is more than just a job, it’s a rare opportunity to build something meaningful from the ground up”

Work Schedule:

- In-office role, working alternate Saturdays.

Ready to take off?

Scam Notice: Beware of impersonators collecting fees for interviews & jobs at Airbound (Opendrone Private Limited) Please do not make any payments and report any such incidents to us at contact@airbound.com .

## About Airbound

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Airbound is building the world’s most efficient zero-infrastructure delivery drones, using a proprietary blended wing body tailsitter design to slash logistics costs and enable delivery where roads don’t exist.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed VC – III stage)
- **Headquarters**: Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
- **Founded**: 2020
- **Founders**: Naman Pushp

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Drone delivery / logistics technology; Aviation and Aerospace Component Manufacturing
- **Target customers**: B2B — primarily serving healthcare (rural blood/supply delivery), e-commerce, and enterprise logistics providers
- **Mission**: “Make logistics invisible, affordable, and universal” — enabling instant, affordable, and reliable delivery across cities, villages, and the last untamed mile

## Products & Services
- **TRT (Tailsitter) Drone**: A blended wing body tailsitter that launches vertically like a rocket and transitions to high-efficiency fixed-wing flight. Key specs: ~40km range, 1kg payload, 60km/hr cruise speed, 60dB noise level, 12:1 lift-to-drag ratio. Requires zero infrastructure (no runways, no charging pads, no ground crew). Built with proprietary carbon fiber composites.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Total Funding**: $10.5M (across 4 rounds)
- **Last Raised**: $8.65M Seed VC – III (led by Lachy Groom, November 2024)
- **Notable Investors**: Lightspeed, Lachy Groom, Humba Ventures, Lightspeed India Partners, gradCapital, Draper Startup House Accelerator
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount grew 265% year-over-year (now ~61 employees); active job postings up 800% year-over-year; has filed at least 1 patent for blended wing body tailsitter UAV; expanding operations across India with focus on healthcare and e-commerce delivery missions

## Competitive Advantages
- **Proprietary blended wing body tailsitter architecture** — combines VTOL flexibility with fixed-wing efficiency (4x aerodynamic efficiency vs. conventional crafts)
- **Zero infrastructure requirement** — no runways, launchpads, or ground crew needed; drones land and launch anywhere
- **Obsessive weight engineering** — custom carbon fiber composites and in-house power delivery modules reduce weight to the gram
- **India-first engineering & manufacturing** — designed, built, and tested in India, optimized for India’s toughest weather and terrain

## Strategic Focus
- Scaling operations to serve rural healthcare (blood and critical supply delivery) and e-commerce logistics
- Expanding autonomous navigation and precision landing capabilities for real-world weather and terrain
- Building a “borderless supply chain” — moving from healthcare to broader logistics verticals
- Continuing to reduce drone weight and cost to achieve sub-$0.05 delivery economics

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Described as “obsessive engineering” — the team rejects parts that are 3g overweight and develops novel manufacturing processes. Emphasis on rapid prototyping and direct work with flight tests and hardware.
- **Work environment**: Hands-on hardware development; full lab access; flight test mentorship; rapid prototyping budget
- **Remote/hybrid**: Likely on-site given hardware focus (Bengaluru HQ)
- **Growth trajectory**: 265% headcount growth in one year, massive hiring surge (9 open roles as of recent data) — early-stage opportunity to shape a high-growth hardware company
- **Notable perks**: Competitive equity, full lab access, rapid prototyping budget, flight test mentorship
- **Team profile**: 61 employees, 45% technical; talent drawn from companies like ideaForge, Apple, REDWING, and Ultrahuman

## Sources
1. [airbound.com](https://www.airbound.com/)
2. [airbound.com/careers](https://www.airbound.com/careers)
3. [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/airbound)
4. [linkedin.com](https://in.linkedin.com/company/airbound-co)
5. [jobs.ashbyhq.com](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/airbound)

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