People / HR Lead (Fractional)

About the role

Create the hiring and people engine for a small, high-performing Foundation team.

The People / HR Lead will build the Foundation’s practical people infrastructure during its early scale-up. The role is responsible for enabling fast, high-quality hiring while establishing the minimum necessary people operations: role scorecards, interview loops, EOR/vendor coordination, onboarding, benefits, compensation process and core policies. The role should help the Foundation recruit exceptional talent without creating corporate HR bureaucracy. The engagement is expected to begin on a fractional basis, with scope to ramp to full-time as the Foundation scales.

This role reports to the COO. Works closely with functional hiring leads, the Executive Director, Finance, Legal/Ops and EOR/recruiting providers.

What you'll do

• Own recruiting operations: job descriptions, candidate pipelines, scheduling, feedback loops and references.
• Support functional leads as hiring DRIs while ensuring quality, speed and consistent decision-making.
• Career coordination EOR, benefits, onboarding, contractor documentation and personnel files.
• Create a simple candidate experience that reflects the Foundation’s standards and pace.
• Support compensation bands, offer mechanics, approvals and negotiation materials.
• Create lightweight people policies: expenses/travel inputs, onboarding, confidentiality, conflicts, access/offboarding and performance basics.
• Maintain HR data confidentiality and ensure appropriate handling of sensitive compensation and personnel information.
• Help reinforce operating principles: high autonomy, high standards, ownership, one team and precise communication.

Requirements

• 7+ years People, HR, Talent or People Operations experience in high-growth technology, fintech, crypto or startup environments.
• Track record building hiring processes and onboarding systems from a lean, early-stage operating base.
• Experience supporting senior, technical, finance, security, legal/ops, BD and marketing searches.
• Experience with global EOR/contractor models, benefits, payroll coordination and cross-border personnel issues.
• Strong understanding of compensation bands, offer construction and closing high-quality candidates.
• Comfort operating with discretion around sensitive personnel, compensation and performance matters.

Qualifications

• Strong operational discipline without process inflation.
• Excellent candidate judgment; ability to distinguish strong interviewers from truly high-quality operators.
• High responsiveness, discretion and precision in written communications.
• High autonomy and high standards: able to make sound decisions quickly, own outcomes and communicate clearly when escalation is required.
• Precise written communication: clear asks, owners, deadlines, context, risks and recommendations.
• Strong judgment in ambiguous, fast-moving environments; knows when to move fast and when to slow down.
• Uses AI, automation and better tools to increase quality, pace and leverage; avoids unnecessary manual process.
• One-team mindset: collaborates directly, avoids silos and helps unblock others.

Other preferred experience

• Crypto, protocol, foundation or DAO ecosystem experience.
• Experience hiring distributed teams across the US, UK, EU and crypto-friendly jurisdictions.
• Familiarity with Notion-based recruiting systems, EOR platforms and AI-assisted candidate workflows.

About Compound

Compound Foundation supports the development, adoption, and responsible growth of Compound - one of DeFi's original lending protocols with over $57B in loans processed - and related decentralized finance tools. We're now focused on Compound's next chapter: building Compound V4, the universal credit layer.