[Hiring] Chief People Officer @Remote Legal Staff

Role Description

Fully remote | US Pacific hours | Reports to the CEO, works closely with the President.

At most companies, HR is a support function. Here, HR is the product. We place legal professionals from Latin America, South Africa, and the Philippines with US law firms. We stay involved for the life of every placement: payroll, monitoring, performance reviews, and replacement. When our people function is excellent, clients stay and we grow. When it's mediocre, we lose placements.

This role brings it together under one owner. What got us here won't get us there.

A true C-suite role with a direct line to the founder. Full ownership of a people function that is the product, not a support desk. The chance to build it your way, on modern tools and AI from day one.

Duties & Responsibilities

What you'll own:

• Org design and change: Structure, reporting lines, spans of control, and decision rights for a company outgrowing its first design.
• Talent quality: Raise the bar on who we hire, who we keep, and who we promote.
• Managers: A middle-management layer that holds people accountable through training, 1:1 standards, and coaching.
• Recruiting: Full accountability for internal hiring and the quality of candidates placed, through a Recruiting Director you'll hire and lead.
• The people we place: Maintain a system that keeps good professionals placed, including surveys, evaluations, and retention strategies.
• Performance: Ensure reviews run on time, ratings mean something, and improvement plans close.
• Pay and rewards: Manage job levels, pay bands, and incentive plans tied to the business.
• People data: Maintain one dashboard leadership reads every week.
• HR tech and AI: Oversee HRIS, ATS, time tracking, and automation.
• The HR team: Manage a small in-house team plus senior fractional specialists.

How you'll work with operations

The Director of Operations owns how the work runs. You own who does the work and the standards they're held to. Operations leaders manage their teams and numbers day to day. You set the standards, own the data, and escalate when something stalls.

How we work

We're fully remote and run on software. Meetings are recorded. Work is tracked with time-tracking software that includes activity monitoring and screenshots. Every team uses AI daily, and new hires learn it in their first week. You'll own, enforce, and defend our monitoring.

Good to know

• Most of the people you're responsible for work inside client law firms.
• People decisions move faster here than most HR leaders are used to.
• Recruiting is behind where it needs to be; you're hired to build the pipeline.

Your first 90 days

• Audit the function and provide a ranked plan: what works, what's broken, what to fix first.
• Agree on decision rights with the CEO.
• Launch the first fixes yourself.

After 12 months

• Every role has a clear scope, KPIs, and a manager who manages to them.
• Review cycles run on time.
• Fewer people leave in their first 90 days.
• Leadership hears about people issues from you first, with a recommendation attached.

Qualifications

• You can work full-time on US Pacific hours. Not negotiable.
• You're remote-ready: experienced in fully remote work with a professional home office.
• You're highly tech-fluent: capable of setting up and running HR systems and using AI daily.
• Your written and spoken English is exceptional.
• You've led an HR function and been accountable for hiring outcomes.
• This is a full-time role. Not fractional, not freelance.

Desired Experience & Qualification

• 10+ years in HR, with at least 3 leading the function and reporting to a CEO or managing director.
• Experience leading the people function for 200+ people, remotely, across several countries and time zones.
• Built an HR or recruiting function from scratch at least once.
• Experience taking a company through a restructure.
• Owned recruiting outcomes at volume.
• Managed performance management end to end.
• Automated real HR work with AI.
• Connected people decisions to revenue, retention, or cost.
• Degree in HR, business, psychology, or a related field.
• Strong plus: experience running HR for people inside client organizations.

This isn't for you if

• You see HR as compliance and paperwork rather than a growth engine.
• You've run HR but never owned hiring outcomes.
• You'd rather design frameworks than make them stick.
• You need consensus or several warnings before acting on a clear people decision.
• You want a large team to delegate to from day one.
• You're uncomfortable running a function on software, data, and AI.

Benefits

• Annual performance bonus, plus anniversary loyalty bonuses of up to 4 months' salary.
• Company-sponsored health insurance.
• Up to 30 days of paid time off a year, growing with tenure.
• Bereavement leave and additional unpaid personal leave.
• Flexible work schedule.
• Home office stipend, computer replacement stipend, and a monthly internet allowance that grows with tenure.
• Professional development and training programs, plus education support for high performers.