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Sardine is a leading agentic risk platform for fighting financial crime, serving major companies like FIS, GoDaddy, Intuit, and Checkout.com. The company is seeking a Head of Talent and People to lead and grow its global team across hubs in the Bay Area, NYC, Austin, Toronto, and São Paulo.
This is a hands-on, player-coach role where you will set direction and manage a full team of practitioners while staying involved in day-to-day work—sourcing hard-to-fill candidates, participating in employee relations conversations, and reviewing compensation bands directly. You will own Talent Acquisition, People Operations, and HR Business Partnering end-to-end, with a mandate to build pragmatic, scalable systems for a fast-growing startup.
Key responsibilities include:
**Team Leadership:** Lead and manage a team of Recruiters and People Ops/HR professionals; set goals, priorities, and capacity plans; coach and develop team members; own headcount planning across the organization; create operating rhythm (standups, pipeline reviews, OKRs, hiring sprints) without over-processizing; model the player-coach standard by jumping into the work alongside your team.
**Talent Acquisition (largest part of the role):** Build and continuously improve the hiring process including interview loops, scorecards, calibration, and candidate experience; partner directly with the CEO and Exec team on leadership hires, owning full-cycle recruiting for key roles including sourcing, screening, and closing; build scalable sourcing channels and employer branding to compete for top talent without over-relying on agencies; track and report on hiring metrics (pipeline health, time-to-fill, offer acceptance) and adjust strategy accordingly.
**People Operations:** Oversee the People Ops Lead and team managing the employee lifecycle (onboarding, offboarding, HRIS administration, benefits administration, compliance); manage and scale performance review, compensation banding, leveling, and promotion cycle infrastructure; ensure compliance with employment law across jurisdictions; provide oversight and escalation support on vendor relationships.
**HR Business Partnering:** Act as a trusted advisor to managers and leadership on org design, team structure, performance management, and employee relations; partner with leaders as an internal leadership coach; handle employee relations issues with sound judgment, discretion, and fairness.
Sardine maintains a remote-first work culture with flexible paid time off, year-end breaks, and work-from-anywhere flexibility, though this role requires presence at the Berkeley office at least 2 days per week.
**Requirements:**
- 12+ years in talent/recruiting and people roles, with real depth in talent
- Experience running people function at fast-paced, high-growth tech startups
- Proven experience managing a strong Talent and People team, ideally spanning both Recruitment and People Ops/HR
- Ability to set direction, hold people accountable, and develop managers
- Generalist range: credible discussing offer negotiation, comp bands, employee relations issues, and performance management
- Player-coach mindset: desire to do the work, not just direct it
- Excellent judgment and discretion; ability to build trust quickly with founders, execs, and employees at all levels
- Strong operating instincts: ability to build lightweight, scalable systems rather than heavy process
- Based in the Bay Area with ability to work from Berkeley office at least 2 days per week
