Job Description
HR Jobs, GiveDirectly Jobs.
About the role
GiveDirectly is seeking an experienced, business-oriented Head of People to design and run the human systems that power our mission. You’ll connect talent to organizational performance in a global, distributed, and exceptionally lean context—serving as both architect and hands-on operator across talent acquisition, org design, leadership development, performance, rewards, HR operations, and employee relations.
This role is remote with a strong preference for East Africa Time (EAT) working hours and/or candidates based in countries where we operate; if outside EAT, at least 3 hours of overlap with EAT is required.
Reports to: Chief Operating Officer
Travel Requirement: Must be able to travel ~3-4 times per year to one of our countries of operation for team retreats or field visits
Level: We are open to considering exceptional candidates at both the Senior Director and Vice President levels, depending on experience and fit.
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What we’re looking for:
- People-as-performance operator: Strong business acumen with a track record of treating the People function as a driver of company/organizational outcomes (talent density, speed, quality, and reliability)—not just a compliance, people support, or admin team.
- A builder in lean, distributed environments: Demonstrated success building simple, scalable systems (hiring, performance, rewards, workforce models, HRIS) across multiple countries and regulatory contexts—with high judgment on tradeoffs under tight constraints.
- Trusted pair of hands for complex employee relations: Depth in sensitive employee relations, risk management, and safeguarding across very diverse contexts and cultural settings; calm, discreet, and principled.
- Exceptional leader and manager: Recruits, calibrates, and develops senior talent; sets a high bar; builds a small, high-leverage team and operating cadence that scales.
- First-principles, outcome oriented problem solver: Structured, analytical thinker who disaggregates problems, designs from first principles, iterates quickly, and measures results.
- Varied context experience: Comfort moving between private sector and NGO settings and between different org sizes; able to bring best-of-both to GD’s model.
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What you’ll do:
- Make talent a competitive advantage: Raise the hiring bar; build a repeatable “hiring machine” (calibration, principles/values assessment, structured loops, quality-at-30/90 days). Build a proactive network and bench for executive and scarce roles.
- Design performance + rewards: Implement a lightweight, high-signal performance system tied to development and consequences; refresh compensation and total rewards to attract and retain top talent in our markets while preserving our lean model and staying economically efficient as an organization.
- Be the steady employee relations advisor: Lead on sensitive personnel matters with discretion and fairness; support investigations, safeguarding, crisis response, and change communications.
- Coach and level up leadership: Partner with the CEO/COO and executives on org design, succession, and leadership effectiveness; intervene early to raise or replace when needed.
- Build scalable global people ops: Improve HRIS/workforce tools; standardize core processes; ensure compliant, efficient operations across countries (subsidiaries, contractors, EOR/PEO) in close partnership with Finance and Legal.
- Strengthen culture and engagement: Ensure our values are felt and lived across the organization; that staff are supported to be at their best thanks to inclusive practices that build growth, trust, belonging, creativity, and execution speed.
- Own people analytics: Ship leadership dashboards (headcount, hiring velocity/quality, retention, eNPS/voice, performance distribution) to inform decisions and accountability.
- Operate with leverage: Keep the People team small, senior, and high-output; set SLAs, clarify ownership, and continuously remove friction for program and fundraising teams.
How to Apply
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