SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
Salary: USD 250,000 - 300,000 / annual
Orbital is an AI platform for real estate legal work, trusted by 5,000+ real estate professionals across UK Magic Circle and US Am Law 100 firms, as well as major companies like M&S. The company has raised $75M to date, including a recent $60M Series B led by Brighton Park Capital, and is scaling rapidly with a team combining deep real estate legal expertise (250+ years combined) with AI-first technology.
As VP of People, you will be the most senior People leader in the company, reporting to the COO (UK-based) and partnering closely with the CEO (New York-based). You will manage a distributed team including a UK-based People Director, UK-based People Enablement Partner, and a US-based People Enablement Partner (currently hiring). Talent Acquisition operates as a separate function.
You will operate as a true business partner, sitting at the leadership table and influencing commercial, product, and strategic decisions. Your role is to assess business strategy, operating model, and growth plans, then set the people and organizational agenda accordingly—not execute a predefined roadmap. Key responsibilities include:
• Lead from the business: Bring a people leader's perspective to commercial challenges, pressure-test growth plans against organizational readiness, identify bottlenecks in management quality, role clarity, and team structure, and ensure hiring, development, reward, retention, and organizational design align with business direction.
• Set people priorities from business context: Assess organizational design, performance management, manager capability, onboarding, compensation strategy, benefits, career progression, and people systems. Translate business realities into a sharper People mandate and challenge existing priorities when needed.
• Strengthen manager capability: Define what good management looks like at Orbital, shape how performance, progression, and recognition are assessed, and hold leadership peers accountable for management quality on their teams.
• Develop the People team: Invest in team growth, establish clear ownership within the function, and build an AI-first, high-leverage People function combining strategic leadership, people product thinking, manager enablement, and operational backbone.
The company is at an inflection point: as it scales, the challenge is not just adding headcount but building an organization that uses AI deliberately, redesigns work where automation creates leverage, and equips managers and teams to operate effectively in that environment.
REQUIREMENTS
Must-haves:
• Significant experience leading a People function at senior level (VP, CPO, or equivalent) with real depth across the people discipline, plus the ability to operate beyond functional expertise.
• Track record of sitting at the leadership table and influencing business decisions, not just delivering a People agenda in isolation.
• Strong commercial instincts: understanding how businesses make money, what impacts delivery, where growth gets stuck, and how organizational design affects outcomes.
• Experience scaling a business through the 100-to-250 headcount phase with judgment about what matters at each stage.
• Senior-level fluency with the US market as an employer, including compensation norms, talent dynamics, and regulatory landscape.
• Experience leading a People function across multiple geographies, with judgment to run a distributed team and understanding of how labor markets, employment frameworks, and cultural norms differ between regions.
• Ability to translate business context into people and organizational strategy, and to challenge existing priorities when business context demands it.
• Experience leading through a People team, setting direction and standards without owning every deliverable.
Nice-to-haves:
• Direct experience of a Series B to Series C growth journey.
• Built out a People function from early-stage base rather than inherited one.
• Familiarity with Built for People framework or equivalent product-led thinking applied to People.
