---
title: 'People Operations Lead at People Culture Talent'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/people-operations-lead-people-culture-talent-san-francisco-n5s6kf63v856'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-15'
---

# People Operations Lead at People Culture Talent

- **Company:** People Culture Talent
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-06-05
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-15
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/people-culture-talent/b299d21f-27c0-4201-a282-462bc2fff013

## Job description

Note: We are recruiting on behalf of our valued client. This opportunity is for a position with their organization, not with People Culture Talent. We're excited to help connect talented professionals with this exceptional team!

## The Role

We're hiring a People Operations Lead to help build the foundation for how a fast growing technology company attracts and develops its team. This is a rare opportunity to join at a stage where many of the most important people programs are still being defined. You'll work closely with leadership to create systems that scale, guide managers through critical people decisions, and shape the employee experience from the ground up. Reporting to the Head of People, you'll be the second dedicated People hire and a key partner in building a thoughtful, high performing organization. Success in this role requires someone who can move comfortably between strategic initiatives and hands on execution, bringing structure where it's needed without creating unnecessary process. If you're energized by building, enjoy solving people challenges in real time, and want meaningful ownership over how a company grows, we'd love to connect.

## What You’ll Own

- People Program Design — Build and evolve foundational programs including onboarding, performance management, compensation, career development, and other initiatives that support company growth.
- Manager & Leadership Partnership — Serve as a trusted advisor to leaders, providing guidance on team effectiveness, organizational design, employee relations, and people decisions.
- Organizational Scaling — Create lightweight systems and processes that improve consistency while preserving speed and flexibility.
- Culture & Employee Experience — Help shape an environment where employees can do their best work, driving initiatives that strengthen engagement, communication, and team health.
- HR Operations & Compliance — Ensure the fundamentals are operating smoothly, from policies and documentation to compliance and employee lifecycle management.
- Workforce Planning — Partner with leadership on headcount planning, organizational structure, and evolving team needs.
- People Infrastructure — Identify gaps before they become bottlenecks, building the frameworks and tools needed to support a growing organization.

## What You’ll Bring

- 6+ years of experience building People programs in an early stage or high growth environment where adaptability and execution mattered as much as expertise.
- Strong HR business partnering skills and the ability to translate business goals into practical people strategies.
- Sound judgment when navigating sensitive employee situations, balancing empathy with accountability.
- A builder's mindset. You enjoy creating systems from scratch and improving them as the organization evolves.
- Comfort operating in ambiguity and making progress without waiting for perfect information.
- A practical approach to People Operations that focuses on outcomes rather than process for process's sake.
- Familiarity with modern AI tools and a curiosity about how technology can improve internal workflows is a plus.

## Why Join Now

- Build, Don't Inherit — You'll have a direct hand in creating the programs, systems, and practices that will shape the company's future.
- Meaningful Influence — This role sits close to leadership, giving you visibility into key decisions and the opportunity to influence how the organization grows.
- Broad Scope — You'll work across strategy, operations, employee experience, and organizational effectiveness rather than being confined to a single area of HR.
- A Defining Growth Stage — The company has established a strong foundation and is investing in the people infrastructure needed to support its next chapter.

## Compensation Band

The starting salary for this role is $170,000, with a range up to $275,000 USD. The provided salary depends on many factors, such as work experience and transferable skills, business needs and impact, and market demands.

## About Our Client

This fast growing AI infrastructure startup is helping define how advanced AI systems are evaluated and understood in real world settings. Their platform helps researchers, developers, and organizations better understand how AI systems perform in real world settings through large scale human feedback, benchmarking, and evaluation. With over a million daily users and the trust of every major AI lab — including OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic — the platform has become a go to resource for understanding AI model performance and capabilities. Behind the platform is a team of researchers, engineers, and builders from leading technology companies and research institutions, united by a commitment to rigorous thinking, craftsmanship, and meaningful impact. Operating at the center of the AI ecosystem, the company works closely with many of the organizations shaping the future of artificial intelligence. This is an opportunity to join a mission driven team tackling some of the most important challenges in AI, with the chance to contribute to technology that is used and trusted by millions around the world.

## About People Culture Talent

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: People Culture Talent (PCT) partners with venture-backed startups to build exceptional teams through embedded talent search, people operations, and culture‑building services.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Bootstrapped)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2018
- **Founders**: Tianna Johnson and Caitlin Cooke

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Human Resources / Talent & People Operations
- **Target customers**: Venture‑backed technology startups at all stages (seed to pre‑IPO), venture capital firms, and high‑growth companies.
- **Mission**: “To build better founders and companies by creating the people, culture, and talent foundations that generational companies are made of.”

## Products & Services
PCT offers a full suite of services organized around three pillars:
- **Talent** – Retained and embedded executive search, recruiting process design, talent strategy, ATS implementation (Ashby partner), candidate experience design, and recruiting metrics.
- **Culture** – Values definition and operationalization, workplace culture development, mission/vision/framework creation, retreat/offsite planning, and employer branding.
- **People** – Organizational design & headcount planning, performance management systems, leveling & career architecture, total rewards, benefits strategy, onboarding/offboarding, payroll & HRIS implementation, manager enablement, and fractional services (marketing, customer support, L&D, Chief of Staff).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Market Cap**: Not publicly available (private, no disclosed funding).
- **Key Metric**: 220 total employees (as of early 2025); companies they have scaled average 300% annual growth.
- **Notable Investors / Partners**: Not an investment‑backed firm; clients and partners include Andreessen Horowitz (where co‑founder Caitlin Cooke advised portfolio companies), Ashby (premier implementation partner), Rippling, Lattice, Leapsome, Gem, Juicebox.
- **Growth Signals**: 5 offices globally (San Francisco, plus remote hubs across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Philippines). Currently hiring engineers (Founding Engineer, Product Engineer, Infrastructure Engineer) indicating a push to build internal platform tools. Have scaled a single client from 10 to 800 team members.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Embedded operating model** – PCT works inside the client’s tools (Slack, ATS, etc.), providing full transparency and real‑time collaboration, unlike traditional agencies.
- **Boutique by design** – The firm intentionally stays small and flat, with senior operators directly managing every engagement. No handoffs to junior consultants.
- **Proven pattern recognition** – Founders have personally scaled engineering and talent teams at Lyft (400→7,000 for IPO), GitHub (through Microsoft acquisition), Notion (20→600, $500M→$10B valuation), and ID.me (100→1,500).
- **Full‑lifecycle offering** – Covers everything from first hire to pre‑IPO people infrastructure, making it a one‑stop partner for founders.

## Strategic Focus
- Deepen the “platform” side of the business by building internal software and systems (ATS implementations, people analytics, automation).
- Expand fractional services across more functions (marketing, customer support, L&D, Chief of Staff).
- Maintain a people‑first, high‑trust culture that mirrors what they advise clients to build.
- Continue serving the venture‑backed ecosystem, from early‑stage founders to later‑stage transformations.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Described as a team of seasoned operators who are “unapologetically embedded” and committed to honest counsel. Values include accountability, collaboration, and continuous learning.
- **Work style**: Hybrid environment with a mix of remote and on‑site work. Offices in San Francisco and remote hubs across multiple countries. Some roles are fully remote, others require in‑office presence (SF).
- **Team**: Small (220 employees) but expanding; direct access to founders and partners. Engineers and non‑engineering roles alike work on high‑impact projects for top VC‑backed startups.
- **Perks**: Not publicly detailed; typical benefits for a Bay Area talent firm likely include competitive compensation, flexibility, and the opportunity to shape the people‑tech ecosystem.

## Sources
1. [People.Culture.Talent. – Homepage](https://www.peopleculturetalent.com/)
2. [Who We Are – People Culture Talent](https://www.peopleculturetalent.com/who-we-are)
3. [What We Do – People Culture Talent](https://www.peopleculturetalent.com/what-we-do)
4. [Built In – People Culture Talent Profile](https://builtin.com/company/people-culture-talent)
5. [People Culture Talent – Careers Page (Ashby)](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/people-culture-talent)

## Other roles at People Culture Talent

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