Head of People

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.

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.

• 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