Strategic People Partner Lead - EU

For this remote role, we can hire in the UK, Ireland, The Netherlands, Germany, Spain or Portugal.

About the Role

We’re hiring a Strategic People Partner Lead on a 9-month fixed-term contract (with possibility to convert to an indefinite position) to partner with senior leaders during an important phase of growth.

This is not a traditional operational People Partner role. It’s a strategic assignment focused on helping leaders build high-performing, accountable teams and make better organisational decisions where they matter most.

You’ll work closely with a dedicated client group, supporting leaders on the people and organisational questions that have the biggest impact on performance. That might mean diagnosing where friction is slowing teams down, helping leaders make sharper structure and prioritisation decisions, strengthening management quality, or using people data to spot risks early and turn them into action.

This role is for someone who is comfortable operating where not everything is fully defined yet. Someone who can build trust quickly, challenge constructively, and turn business needs into practical people interventions that hold up in execution.

Why this role now

The best People Partner roles tend to come at a specific point in a company’s journey. A point where the business has enough scale and complexity that organisation design, leadership quality, and team effectiveness directly shape results.

That’s where this role sits.

As teams grow and priorities shift, leaders need sharper support on how their organisations are structured, where accountability is unclear, and how to create more consistency without adding unnecessary process. The need is not for more HR activity. It’s for better judgement, better diagnosis, and focused interventions that improve how the business actually runs.

This role sits in the middle of those questions. You’ll help leaders think through trade-offs, make better decisions, and turn organisational challenges into practical action.

What you’ll focus on

You’ll spend your time working with senior leaders on questions like:

• Where is organisational friction slowing execution or reducing accountability?
• How should teams, roles, and responsibilities evolve as new tooling becomes available and priorities shift?
• What capability or leadership gaps are likely to affect performance over the coming quarters?
• How do we raise the quality of feedback, performance conversations, and people decisions across leadership teams?
• Where can people data help us spot patterns, risks, or intervention points earlier?
• How do we support change in a way that people understand, leaders can execute, and teams can sustain?
  
  

From there, you’ll turn those questions into focused work across org design, workforce planning, leadership coaching, performance, and change. The goal is not to create processes for its own sake, but to help leaders solve the right problems in ways that improve how the organisation actually works.

Things you will do:

Partner with leaders on organisational effectiveness
You’ll work closely with senior leaders to improve team effectiveness and sustained performance. That includes diagnosing root causes behind organisational friction, advising on role clarity and structure, and helping leaders make decisions that improve how teams operate in practice.

Support organisation design and workforce decisions
You’ll advise on organisation design, team shape, and headcount trade-offs, helping leaders think through how to structure their organisations against changing priorities. You’ll also support workforce planning and people budgeting discussions where sharper planning and prioritisation are needed.

Coach leaders and raise the performance bar
You’ll coach managers and senior leaders to improve feedback quality, strengthen performance conversations, and handle people decisions with more clarity and consistency. You’ll help create stronger accountability and support leaders in building high-performing teams.

Use data to inform action
You’ll use people data to identify patterns, emerging risks, and opportunities for intervention. Rather than simply reporting what has already happened, you’ll help leaders interpret what the data is telling them and turn that into practical action.

Support change and transformation
You’ll lead or support key people initiatives and organisational change work, including cyclical processes such as performance reviews and engagement surveys. You’ll help ensure communication is clear, decisions are understood, and change lands effectively across teams.

Work across the People function with clarity
You’ll collaborate closely with People Operations and the wider People team, helping establish clear ownership boundaries and balancing operational compliance with strategic intent. You’ll make sure the business gets the right support in the right way.

What you already bring to the table:

You’ve worked as a Strategic People Partner in a fast-paced or scaling environment and found that pace energising rather than frustrating.

You’re used to partnering with senior leaders on organisational performance, team effectiveness, and structure, rather than operating mainly as an escalation point for day-to-day HR matters. You know how to build trust quickly, how to diagnose what is really going on beneath the surface, and when to challenge in a way that moves things forward.

You’re commercially minded and comfortable thinking in trade-offs rather than policy alone. You can step into ambiguity, make sound judgement calls, and translate broad business challenges into focused people-solutions.

You likely bring experience in:

• partnering senior leaders on organisational performance and design
• organisational design and team structure optimisation
• workforce planning and prioritisation
• leadership coaching and performance management
• change, transformation, or restructuring work
• using people data to shape decisions and interventions
• working knowledge of employment law in the US and ideally other regions such as Europe or the UK