VP of People

Overview

We’re on a mission to make real estate transactions smarter, faster, and friction-free. Real estate is the world’s largest asset class, yet the legal processes and tools behind it remain slow, manual, and underinvested. Lawyers must review dense documents line by line and piece together information across silos, all while clients demand faster, more transparent due diligence.

About the role

This is the most senior People role in the company, reporting to our COO (based in the UK) and partnering closely with our CEO (based in New York). Your direct team is our UK-based Principal People Ops Lead, our UK-based People Enablement Partner, and a US-based People Enablement Partner we're currently hiring into the New York office, and you'll shape how it grows from here.

Responsibilities

• Lead from the business. Your first team is the leadership team. You'll be part of commercial, product, and strategic conversations, bringing a people leader's perspective to business challenges rather than representing the People function in isolation.
• Set the People agenda from business context. You won't be given a predefined project list. Instead, you'll assess what you learn from the business and set the people and organizational priorities from there, drawing on the Principal People Ops Lead's strategic insight and operational knowledge from within the function to inform your thinking.
• Strengthen manager capability and performance. How Orbital defines, enables, and recognizes high performance is one of the biggest opportunities for this role to shape. You'll set the standard for what good management looks like here, shape how performance, progression, and recognition are assessed across the company, and hold your peers on the leadership team accountable for the quality of management on their own teams.
• Develop the People team. You'll be the consistent presence the team anchors around, invest in their growth, develop clear ownership within the function, and be accountable for the team's development over time, not just its immediate output.

Requirements

• Significant experience leading a People function at senior level (VP, CPO, or equivalent).
• You bring real depth across the people discipline.
• A track record of sitting at the leadership table and influencing business decisions, not just delivering a People agenda within one.
• Strong commercial instincts. You understand how businesses make money, what impacts delivery, where growth gets stuck, and how organizational design affects all of it.
• Experience scaling a business through the 100-to-250 headcount phase, with the judgment to know what matters at each stage.
• Senior-level fluency with the US market as an employer, including compensation norms, talent dynamics, and the regulatory landscape that shape how People functions operate at scale.
• Experience leading a People function across multiple geographies, with the judgment to run a distributed team and a clear grasp of how labor markets, employment frameworks, and cultural norms differ between regions.
• The ability to translate business context into a people and organizational strategy, and to challenge existing priorities when the business context demands it.
• Experience leading through a People team, setting direction and standards without owning every deliverable.

Nice-to-Haves

• Direct experience of a Series B to Series C growth journey.
• Built out a People function from an early-stage base, rather than inherited one.
• Familiarity with the Built for People framework or equivalent product-led thinking applied to People.

Why you'll love it here

• You'll join a startup at an exciting inflection point, with real influence at the leadership table from day one.
• You'll shape the People function rather than inherit one, with room to build it around product thinking and AI leverage.
• You'll tackle the kind of business challenges that make this a genuinely career-defining role.
• You'll be part of a collaborative, highly ambitious and friendly culture where curiosity and innovation are celebrated.

Benefits

• Compensation: We offer a competitive starting salary in the range of $250,000-$300,000, depending on experience.
• Flexible work arrangements, including remote work options.
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage for you and your dependents.
• Generous parental leave policy designed to support all parents and caregivers in balancing family and work life.
• Professional equipment and personal development budget along with training opportunities to learn and develop your skills.
• Pre-tax commuter benefits to help you get to and from the office.