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People Programs Lead

AfterQuery· Internal Ops
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San Francisco$160k - $230kFull-timePosted 5mo ago

About the role

First dedicated People Programs hire responsible for design and execution of compensation, career progression, performance management, and learning initiatives to build a durable, high-performing organization in an AI-native environment.

Responsibilities

  • Design AfterQuery’s total compensation strategy - philosophy, bands, leveling, refresh cadence, and equity framework — and refresh it annually against benchmarks and market signals.
  • Build the career pathways and leveling rubric that operators see, in writing, what excellence at the next level looks like and how to get there.
  • Stand up a performance management cycle that is fast, written, and useful to calibrate across the company without becoming a tax.
  • Design learning & development programs for a high-agency, early-career workforce — onboarding, manager training, technical depth, and feedback culture.
  • Own retention as a measurable outcome: define the leading indicators, build the sensing systems, and run programs that move the metric.
  • Partner with leadership and finance on org design, headcount planning, and comp/burn tradeoffs that shape the next phase of our growth.
  • Treat People programs as products — instrument them, measure adoption and outcomes, and iterate.
  • Create and manage 1099 program

Qualifications

  • 5-8+ years of experience across a combination of top-tier strategy consulting, analytical or strategy & operations roles, and core People / HR programs work.
  • Time at companies known for strong People programs (e.g., Stripe, Block/Square, Netflix, Airbnb, Bridgewater), or industry peers such as Mercor, Surge, or ScaleAI. You have seen what excellent looks like and have built (not just managed) at least one program end-to-end.
  • Quantitative rigor that goes beyond comp benchmarks: you can model leveling decisions, attrition, comp band overlap, and equity refresh tradeoffs, and you reach for the spreadsheet before the slide.
  • A point of view. You can debate with founders about decisions, and bring the data and the company’s values to back it up.
  • Demonstrated ability to design programs from 0→ 1. Bonus points if you have done this through a strategy shift.
  • A genuine interest in the AfterQuery thesis: that the future of AI is bottlenecked on human data, and that the workforce generating that data is the most important product decision the company makes.
  • High agency, low ego, written-first. Comfortable in a 5-day in-office SF environment that prizes speed and direct feedback.

Skills

Required:Compensation design and benchmarkingCareer ladders and levelingPerformance managementLearning & development program designRetention strategy and measurementOrg design & headcount planningProgram management (People programs as products)

Benefits

  • Health Insurance: Medical, Vision, Dental
  • 401(k) with Employer Match
  • Daily Meals: Daily UberEats Stipend
  • Monthly Wellness Stipend
Last updated Oct 21, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
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About AfterQuery

AfterQuery is an applied research lab curating data solutions to accelerate foundation model development.

AI researchdata solutionsfoundation model developmenttraining datasupervised fine-tuningreinforcement learningagent environmentscomputer use trajectories
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