[Hiring] Senior People Partner @Socket

Role Description

We’re hiring Socket’s first People Partner dedicated to our Technology teams! We’re scaling quickly: People are taking on new mandates, scope is expanding, and managers are facing new territory. We need someone who can influence without hiding behind policy, support managers without taking over, and introduce structure only when it makes the company faster and more effective.

The work moves between long-range organization questions and immediate human ones. In the same week, you might:

• Help a leader evolve how their team operates.
• Coach a new manager through an important conversation.
• Improve how we run performance reviews, compensation, or onboarding.

In each case, you’ll spot patterns, clarify tradeoffs, and turn discussion into decisions and follow-through. Because this is the first dedicated People Partner at Socket, you’ll have room to shape how People partnership works here.

Qualifications

• 7+ years as a People Partner for technical teams with hands-on depth across employee relations, performance, compensation, leveling, succession, retention, and change.
• Strong judgment in complex & uncharted situations, including when to involve Legal or specialized expertise.
• 2+ years of experience supporting distributed, multi-country teams.
• A builder’s mindset: you create practical structure, communicate clearly, and keep the company moving through ambiguity.
• Curiosity and active investment in AI, data, and better tools, with good judgment about where automation helps and where people remain accountable.
• Strong familiarity with technical career pathing, levels, and compensation models.
• Experience building or improving People systems in a scaling company.

Requirements

• Partner directly with Technology leaders on team design, structure, capacity, headcount, and the talent decisions behind our priorities.
• Help leaders make clearer, more consistent calls on roles, levels, compensation, succession, and internal movement.
• Coach managers to set expectations, give useful feedback, address performance, navigate conflict, and lead effectively as their scope grows.
• Own employee relation issues from first signal through resolution, bringing the right balance of care, rigor, documentation, and pace.
• Lead talent and performance cycles that produce decisions and action, not just meetings, ratings, or completed forms.
• Work with Talent to improve role design, leveling, and how we evaluate candidates for technical positions.
• Use data and day-to-day signals to float retention concerns, gaps, and recurring friction early.
• Build practical fixes with People Ops, Legal, and Finance when a process is unclear, inconsistent, or no longer fits the company’s stage.

Benefits

• Market competitive salary bands
• Meaningful equity program
• Comprehensive health benefits for you and your family (99% coverage)
• Flexible time-off, holidays, and winter shutdown to rest & recharge
• Paid parental leave
• Remote-first, with quarterly team off-sites

Company Description

At Socket, we:

• Pursue Excellence: We set ourselves apart by consistently delivering work of exceptional quality and distinction.
• Move with urgency and focus: We prioritize swift, decisive action.
• Think rigorously: We care about being right and it often takes reasoning from first principles to get there. We value alternative perspectives and have constructive discussions.
• Trust and amplify: We overtrust, always assume good intent, and give specific feedback to help each other improve.
• Feel a strong sense of ownership: We wear many hats and feel a strong sense of overall ownership of the company and we're non-territorial regarding our nominal domains.
• Are customer obsessed: We relentlessly prioritize the needs of our customers, striving to exceed their expectations and delight them at every interaction.