Head of People & Performance

Our Mission:

At Sunrise Robotics, we are dedicated to augmenting humanity through intelligent robotics. Our mission is to elevate the world of manufacturing by introducing intelligent, flexible robots that enhance human capabilities and existing machinery, ushering in the next era of production at higher quality, with less waste, and lower cost.

Our Vision:

We see a future where every element of manufacturing, from design to assembly, is optimised with intelligent automation. Our vision is to integrate flexible robotic solutions, based on generic hardware and advanced software/AI capabilities, into manufacturing, particularly in small and medium-sized enterprises, to make automation economically viable and accessible, for all sizes of manufacturers. We are not just building robots; we are creating the strategically crucial components for autonomous, intelligent agents of the future.

The role

We are hiring our first Head of People & Performance.

You report to the CEO and sit on the leadership team. You own how we hire, how we set the bar, how we review performance, pay and promote, and how we part ways. You also own the platform underneath: contracts, onboarding, HRIS and compliance across more than 10 European countries.

We have doubled the team in the last 9 months to 50 people today and expect to continue growing the team on a similar trajectory. The job is to build the people system that scales with that.

This is primarily a builder's role. Build lean - sharp systems, a small set of trusted partners, and automation for the transactional work. Grow the People team only when necessary.

We are outcome-driven, direct, high trust and high autonomy organization. There is very little hand-holding. We enjoy working with people that bring a healthy degree of intensity and drive.

 

What you will do

• Own performance
  Design one performance cycle for the whole company and run the first one. Every leader should be able to tell you and the CEO who is above the bar, who is on it, and who is below, and act on it within days.

• Own the employee experience
  Build what it is like to work at Sunrise from the first day to last.

• Own compensation and levels
  Build comp bands for today's roles, not a framework for roles we don't have yet. Hang them off a light leveling structure. Standardize pay awards and equity top-ups, so every hiring manager can make a defensible offer inside the system.

• Own how we hire
  Manage our internal recruiting, embedded recruiting partners, and the hiring managers' process. Standardize scorecards and interview packs. A role does not open without one. You are not the recruiter, but you own the system the recruiters run in.

• Own people operations end-to-end
  Contracts, onboarding, offboarding, HRIS, employer of record, policies, benefits by country, payroll inputs. Automate whatever can be automated. From signed offer to laptop on desk, no manual steps.

• Coach
  Coach our leadership and team leads on people and performance: setting expectations, giving direct feedback, running hard conversations, acting early.

• Codify our culture
  Talent and culture are upstream of everything else. The founders write it down. You turn it into how we hire, review and reward, and you act decisively when someone does not live it.

• Keep us compliant across more than 10 countries
  Employment structure, ISO documentation. Own the framework that decides where and how we employ the best talent.

Who you are

• You have built this before
  Somewhere, a fast-growing company runs on a people system you built. You may have been the first people hired at a Series A that grew past 100, the number two in a people function at a larger scale-up, or an operator who did it from a consulting, operations, or venture seat without the title. We care about the work, not the title.

• You are a systems thinker
  You see how changing one thing here moves another thing there, and you design for it. You have built systems that survived scale while keeping the operation flexible.

• You are not afraid of numbers
  Comp bands, equity, headcount plans. You are at home in a spreadsheet, and you never mistake the spreadsheet for the person.

• You have operated across countries
  Employment complexity in more than 10 jurisdictions is a problem you know how to work with, not one you outsource entirely.

• You are detail-oriented and write everything down
  You are bothered when small details don’t match. You are a great writer who values concise, legible, high-signal documents.

• You hold confidences
  You will know things few others know. That access is a duty, not a way to be liked.

• You push back on founders
  You get to the real intent behind a vague request and tell us when we are wrong.

• You are curious about the work itself
  You understand what a robotics engineer or a deploy engineer actually does day to day.

• You set standards by doing
  You are direct in 1:1s and you move fast. You are familiar with modern (AI) tools and best practices.

Bonus points

• You know Deel, Shapes and Ashby, or their equivalents.

• You have automated people-ops work with AI tools yourself, not bought a tool that promised to.

• You have done this in a hardware or deep-tech company, where part of the team works next to the machines and part works in customer factories.

Why Sunrise?

• Join an early stage team to work directly with the CEO, leadership, and founders in a high impact role.

• We care about talent density, speed of execution, and long-term technology leverage.

• Get things done and shape your own trajectory.