SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
Salary: USD 175,000 - 200,000 / annual
Ketryx is an AI platform enabling healthcare and life sciences companies to accelerate product development and regulatory compliance. The company powers 4 of the world's top 5 life science companies and 25% of the Fortune 500 life science market, backed by Lightspeed Ventures with founders from Amgen and Wolfram.
As Head of Operations, you will own all operations and people functions as Ketryx scales across the US and Europe. You'll inherit a small, capable team and drive the company's growth through strategic people management, organizational design, and hiring excellence. This is a hands-on leadership role reporting directly to the CEO, with quarterly travel to the Vienna office.
Key responsibilities include:
**Culture and Collaboration:** Embed company values into daily operations, own performance management (goal setting, reviews, calibration), build manager capability across first-time leaders, and measure/act on engagement data.
**People Operations & Compensation:** Manage HRIS, payroll, benefits, onboarding, and offboarding across US and European entities. Design leveling frameworks, compensation bands, and equity philosophy. Maintain employment compliance across multiple jurisdictions and run annual compensation cycles with Finance.
**Talent Acquisition & Scaling:** Build a hiring engine for senior engineers, GTM talent, and life sciences domain experts. Partner on headcount planning and sequencing. Raise interview standards and candidate experience. Develop employer brand to attract top talent.
You'll set strategy around cross-functional collaboration, design how the organization works, and handle tactical people questions. The role is critical because how well Ketryx hires, develops, and supports its team directly impacts the speed at which customers can ship life-saving products.
**Requirements:**
- 8+ years in HR/People Operations with at least 3 years leading the function or a major pillar at high-growth startups
- Direct experience scaling companies through significant headcount growth; understanding of what breaks at 100, 200, 500 people
- Strong recruiting instincts and ability to assess engineering and GTM talent markets
- Demonstrated ownership of compensation and leveling design
- Multi-country employment experience (US and EU) or proven ability to get up to speed quickly
- Comfort operating without large team or established playbook; ability to build systems and run them
- Sound judgment in ambiguous, confidential situations with directness to escalate hard news early
- Strong opinions on what works, willingness to experiment, and network of People leaders to consult
**Preferred:** Experience supporting distributed teams across US and European time zones.
