Head of People

About Relay

Relay is a cross-chain payments network that delivers instant, low‑cost bridging, swaps, and transactions across 85+ chains. We’ve served 5M+ users with 59M+ transactions and $6B+ in volume. Our mission is to make moving value across chains as fast, cheap, and reliable as online payments; abstracting chain complexity so the next billion users never have to think about it.

The Role

We’re hiring a Head of People to build and lead a world‑class People function; equal parts strategic partner and hands‑on operator. You’ll shape our culture, design the org for speed and clarity, and put in place the lightweight systems that help senior, high‑ownership people do their best work in a global, remote‑first environment.

Why Relay?

• Impact: Work as a true partner to leadership, deeply influencing org design, talent standards, and culture

• Autonomy: Build a People function from the ground up with a high degree of trust and freedom

• Leverage: We’re profitable and growing quickly, which means you’ll have the resources you need to do great work

• Challenge: There’s never a dull moment as we navigate fast growth in a rapidly evolving industry

• Upside: We’re post-PMF, but pre-scale. The perfect time to join.

What You’ll Own

• People strategy aligned to company priorities: Act as a trusted partner to the CEO, COO, and functional leads

• Org design and workforce planning: Clarify responsibilities, structure, and career pathways for a highly technical team

• Performance & growth: Evolve a feedback-first culture and a pragmatic performance cadence (calibration, promotions, development) without heavy process

• Manager & leadership enablement: Coach leaders, raise bar for manager effectiveness, and create simple toolkits that scale

• Talent & recruiting partnership: Partner with leadership and external recruiters on headcount planning, brand positioning, and closing

• Retention & compensation: Define a clear compensation philosophy, pay bands, benchmarking, and refresh rhythms; proactively monitor engagement and satisfaction

• People Ops systems: Maintain and continuously improve payroll, benefits, leave, and HRIS in partnership with Finance; keep us compliant across jurisdictions

• Policies & employee relations: Maintain handbook and policies; handle sensitive issues with judgment and discretion

• Onboarding & offboarding: Own an end-to-end, high-signal experience that sets expectations and accelerates ramp up

• Culture & rituals: Lead company-wide rituals and offsites (2–4×/year) that strengthen trust in a remote-first, async-friendly team

• Cross-functional cohesion: Work closely with every function, and own large cross-functional projects like M&A diligence and integration

What Success Looks Like

• Org is simple, fast, and aligned: teams have crisp interfaces and fewer bottlenecks

• Compensation is kept up to date and trusted; attrition remains low

• People are clear on expectations, growth paths, and how performance is assessed

• Nothing slips through the cracks; we identify & solves challenges before they escalate

• Hiring velocity improves without lowering the bar; our closing rate increases and we make less mistakes

• People Ops runs smoothly; clean data, reliable systems, and no compliance surprises.

• Our culture is explicit and felt: “safe hands,” high ownership, and healthy feedback loops

• Our top talent is happy, and feels like they can do great work without friction

• We develop a reputation as a great place to work, increasing the quality of inbound candidates

What You Bring

• 8–10+ years in People leadership with direct partnership to senior execs; experience supporting engineering/product orgs in high-growth environments

• Track record building lightweight, scalable performance and growth systems

• Demonstrated judgment in employee relations and sensitive matters

• Experience architecting compensation philosophy and running cycles

• Strong operator: you’ve owned onboarding, payroll/benefits, leave, and multi-jurisdiction compliance, ideally with modern tools (e.g., Rippling/Remote/Carta)

• Excellent communication and coaching; comfortable in a distributed, fast-moving team

Comp & Benefits

• $200,000+ base salary + equity

• Remote-first with meaningful IRL time

• Comprehensive health, dental, vision; home office setup allowance

• Unlimited PTO with an encouraged minimum

• Access to crypto education and industry events; work with a world-class technical team and partners across the ecosystem