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Head of People

Periodic Labs· Business and Operations
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Menlo Park, CA$250k - $350kFull-timePosted 6mo ago

About the role

Head of People responsible for running the full people function, partnering with leadership to design systems, shape culture, and lead talent, HR, and people operations in an engineering-forward, AI/physical sciences environment.

Responsibilities

  • Run all things people related, spanning talent, HR business partnering, onboarding, performance, compensation, learning and development.
  • Lead and scale talent acquisition, including building the recruiting team, evolving hiring processes and infrastructure, and shaping the company’s hiring strategy as it grows.
  • Partner directly with the leadership team on organizational design, workforce planning, and growth strategy as the company grows through its next phase
  • Lead employee relations work with professionalism and sound judgment, handling sensitive situations, investigations, and executive coaching with discretion and care
  • Design the people systems that help our scientific and engineering teams grow, get recognized, and get paid fairly, built for how technical people actually work, not borrowed from a playbook.
  • Design onboarding programs that integrate new engineers and scientists quickly into the Periodic Labs culture and way of working
  • Shape how we scale as an organization. This isn't a traditional hierarchy-building exercise, it's figuring out how a lab-first company adds people and structure without losing what makes it work.
  • Use people data and analytics to surface insights and drive evidence-based decisions on headcount, attrition, engagement, and team effectiveness

Qualifications

  • 15+ years of HR experience, with meaningful time in a senior people leadership role at a technology, research, or engineering-forward company
  • Experience building and leading a talent acquisition function, including hiring and managing recruiters, as the company scales
  • A background supporting teams in physical products, semiconductors, manufacturing, or hardware-forward startups
  • Experience navigating the intersection of research and engineering cultures, where intellectual rigor, speed, and hands-on problem-solving coexist
  • Strong command of the full HR spectrum: performance management, compensation design, employee relations, organizational design, and people operations
  • A builder's mindset. You're comfortable in ambiguous environments where people programs are still being defined and you'll often have to create the playbook from scratch
  • High EQ and communication skills. You build trust quickly with engineers and scientists, and you know how to navigate difficult conversations with directness and care
  • Sound judgment on sensitive matters. You handle employee relations and investigations with appropriate seriousness and discretion
  • Data fluency: you use people analytics to diagnose issues, identify trends, and support decisions with evidence

Skills

Required:HR leadershipOrganizational designEmployee relations & investigationsData-driven HR / people analytics

Benefits

  • Visa sponsorship: Yes, we sponsor visas.
Last updated Sep 16, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Periodic Labs

From bits to atoms.

Periodic Labs is an artificial intelligence research company pioneering the next leap in scientific discovery. We operate at the intersection of machine learning and scientific experimentation under the thesis that that true understanding of the universe is only possible by interacting and experimenting on it.

artificial intelligencescientific discoverymachine learningscientific experimentation
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