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Salary: USD 150,000 - 195,000 / annual
Panthalassa is a renewable energy and ocean technology company developing devices that capture energy from the ocean for applications including computing and renewable fuels. The company is a public benefit corporation headquartered in Portland, Oregon, backed by leading venture capitalists and philanthropic investors, with a team drawn from SpaceX, Blue Origin, Boeing, Tesla, Apple, and other leading organizations.
As the first People Partner for Manufacturing, you will support the rapid growth of the manufacturing organization across three Portland-area worksites. You will work closely with the Vice President of Manufacturing and leaders across Manufacturing Engineering, Production, and Supply Chain, supporting hourly employees, salaried employees, and contractors. This is a senior individual contributor role with substantial independence, and you will partner with the Vice President of Talent and People Operations to establish how this work is done at Panthalassa.
Key responsibilities include spending real time on production floors at all three sites to understand manufacturing operations and keep information flowing between sites and headquarters. You will partner with manufacturing leadership on team structure, leadership capacity, and role clarity. You will help leaders plan workforce needs—whether to hire, move people, use contractors, or reorganize—and partner with Talent Acquisition on hiring and site expansions.
You will build the manufacturing portion of job families, levels, and career paths, and coach managers to use them in hiring, development, and promotion. You will coach managers, including new ones as leadership layers are added, to set clear expectations, give useful feedback, address performance early, and develop their people. In difficult situations, you will guide managers without taking over—keeping teams accountable to their leaders.
You will handle complex employee matters including conflict, accommodations, investigations, and exits with care and proportion. You will give direct advice, including when you disagree, explain your reasoning, listen to other perspectives, and help people reach workable decisions. You will bring organizational patterns and risks to the VP of Talent and People Operations with clear recommendations, and build processes only where they solve real problems.
Success means manufacturing leaders seek your perspective because you understand their work; managers handle feedback, performance, and team issues with greater confidence; employees trust you to listen and follow through; worksites stay connected to headquarters; and the practices you build are simple enough that people actually use them.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 8+ years of progressive experience in HR or People Partner roles, including substantial independent partnership with senior leaders
- Experience supporting hourly employees, salaried employees, and contractors across multiple worksites, with credibility on the production floor as well as in the office
- Experience helping a fast-growing or changing organization make decisions about structure, workforce needs, and leadership capacity
- Strong manager-coaching skills, with examples of helping managers improve how they lead rather than taking over their responsibilities
- Sound judgment on complex employee matters and employment law, including knowing when to involve legal counsel
- Demonstrated ability to earn trust and influence decisions without reporting authority, including challenging senior leaders while remaining a credible partner
- Clear communication, discretion, and steady judgment under pressure, and comfort working through ambiguity without a fully built process
DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS:
- Experience supporting manufacturing or another technically complex, shift-based organization, ideally including opening or expanding a worksite
- Experience in a high-growth startup where you helped build the organization and adapted your approach as it grew
ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:
- Travel to vendors and test sites as needed
- Intermittently able to work longer hours and weekends to support critical needs
