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Salary: USD 250,000 - 280,000 / annual
Coast is reimagining B2B card payments infrastructure for the U.S. commercial fleet market, serving 500,000+ commercial fleets and 40 million commercial vehicles. The company has raised $135 million and grown to approximately 130 employees across two offices: New York City headquarters (two-thirds of team) and a sales/operations office in Utah.
You will be Coast's first VP, People—the company's senior people leader—building and running the People function end-to-end: People Operations, Total Rewards, Talent (recruiting, performance, career development), and Culture. You'll report to the SVP of Operations and lead a team including the Head of Talent, People Ops Lead, and a growing people team.
Key responsibilities include:
**Build and lead the People function:** Scale People Operations from foundational to full-service; design team structure, roadmap, and systems (HRIS, payroll, benefits); own the People budget and tooling decisions; hire and develop the People team.
**Partner with executive team and managers:** Collaborate on organizational design, headcount planning, and people implications of business decisions; coach managers through hiring, performance, promotions, and difficult conversations; build manager enablement programs; serve as trusted advisor on people problems.
**Own recruiting, performance, and career development:** Design and run performance review and promotion cycles; build career frameworks; create systems to catch performance and engagement issues early; lead recruiting through Head of Talent; own hiring plans, process, and candidate experience for both offices including sales and operations hiring in Utah; maintain hiring bar as company grows.
**Drive compensation, equity, and benefits strategy:** Design compensation philosophy and pay bands; partner with Finance on equity strategy; source and manage benefits and perks; run comp cycles with rigor and fairness; partner with Finance, Sales, and Revenue Operations on sales compensation plans for account executives, BDRs, and commissioned roles.
**Shape culture, engagement, and employee experience:** Preserve culture as headcount grows; lead team events and office experience in both New York and Utah; ensure Utah team has equal access to leadership, information, and career paths; run engagement surveys and turn feedback into action.
**Own compliance and risk:** Ensure policies, records, and practices comply with employment law in New York, Utah, and other locations; build HR infrastructure that scales; own worker classification and wage-and-hour compliance including timekeeping for non-exempt roles and written commission agreements for sales roles.
**Success milestones:**
- 90 days: Meet entire company including Utah team; assess People function strengths/gaps; prioritize comp/benefits/performance fixes; establish three key People priorities with leadership.
- 6 months: Document compensation philosophy and pay bands; run first performance review cycle; establish clear People team ownership and hiring plan; ensure HR policies and records are compliant and audit-ready.
- 12 months: Integrate people strategy into company growth and headcount plans; improve engagement and retention measurably; build People function infrastructure and playbooks; establish early involvement of People team in major decisions.
**Requirements:**
- 10+ years in People/HR roles, including experience leading a People function at a high-growth startup that has successfully scaled beyond Coast's current stage of maturity
- Track record designing compensation philosophy, pay bands, and equity strategy, and running comp cycles that scale with headcount
- Experience coaching managers through performance, promotion, and org design decisions, and building manager enablement programs where none existed
- Recruiting leadership: managed a recruiting team and built hiring processes that hold the bar as hiring volume grows
- Deep knowledge of employment law and HR compliance across multiple U.S. states, including New York
- Experience supporting a multi-site workforce that includes non-exempt and commissioned sales and operations teams based outside headquarters, including sales compensation design
- Comfortable operating at the executive table: strong judgment, discretion, and ability to influence without formal authority
- Strong analytical instincts: comfortable working in HRIS and comp data and turning it into recommendations
- High ownership mindset: builds processes when they don't exist
- Experience in fintech, payments, or B2B SaaS preferred
- New York City based; able to be in-office 3–4 days per week and travel to Utah office at least once per quarter
