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Ent is an intent-aware workspace security platform protecting human and AI-driven work. Founded by the co-founders of RiskIQ (acquired by Microsoft) and the team behind Microsoft Security Copilot, the company is in production with Global 2000 customers and backed by top-tier investors including Sequoia and In-Q-Tel.
As Director of Talent & Performance, you will report to the VP of People and own the design and execution of Ent's complete employee lifecycle system—from recruitment close through onboarding, leveling, performance management, and career growth. This is a foundational role at a rapidly scaling company (1 to 100+ people in its first year) where you will build systems that most people leaders only debate on panels.
Key responsibilities include:
- Design one continuous employee lifecycle where hiring signals flow into onboarding, performance reviews, and future hiring decisions, creating a self-improving system rather than isolated processes.
- Partner with Talent Acquisition to close the loop between recruitment and post-hire development, turning candidate insights into actionable signals for onboarding and performance management.
- Build and own competency ladders across job families, enabling managers to make defensible leveling decisions.
- Design and run the full performance cycle, including merit discussions with the VP of People.
- Implement agentic AI workflows to automate review prep, calibration analysis, and performance reporting while maintaining human oversight on ratings, compensation, and job decisions.
- Own performance metrics and dashboards for leadership, providing same-day answers to business questions.
- Serve as the primary People partner for directors and managers, coaching them through performance conversations, hard calls, and capability building.
- Facilitate calibration sessions and hold the line on leveling standards, including managing exceptions.
- Build manager capability in writing evidence-based reviews, preparing for calibration, and making sound level calls.
You will work in an environment that values customer-first thinking, humility, and urgency. The company moves at the speed of the business and prioritizes shipping excellent solutions in real conditions over perfection in planning documents.
REQUIREMENTS:
Must-haves:
- Deep expertise in talent and performance management (not a secondary responsibility). You have personally designed and run a complete performance cycle at a company of 100–500 people in a build phase, not administering an inherited system.
- Experience building job architecture or competency ladders from scratch across multiple job families, with demonstrated manager adoption.
- Ideally, you have seen this work at scale (500+ people) and understand how to build systems that grow without architectural rework.
- Demonstrated experience implementing agentic AI in people practices, specifically around performance management. You can show the workflow, what it ran on, what it produced, where humans stayed in the loop, and measurable outcomes—not just AI-assisted drafting.
- Fluency in performance metrics: you know what to measure about cycles, managers, and organizations, and you report it in ways that drive executive action.
- Direct coaching experience with directors and managers (not just training), plus facilitation of calibration with senior leaders.
- Experience managing performance cases through termination across multiple states, working collaboratively with legal counsel.
- Ability to build and ship the 80% solution rather than pursuing enterprise perfection.
Bonus:
- You have stood up a talent management system from scratch rather than inherited one.
- Multi-country HR experience, including employer-of-record arrangements.
- Experience scaling a company that doubled headcount in under 18 months.
- Partnership experience with quota-carrying sales organizations on ramp and performance management.
Not required:
- Broad expertise across all people disciplines. Compensation architecture, benefits, HR compliance, and HR systems are handled separately. The company values exceptional strength in partnership, ladders, performance, and AI-enabled workflows over generalist competence.
