Senior HR Business Partner - Leading Frontier AI Lab (Paying up to £225k + Equity)

Job Title: Senior HR Business Partner

Location: London (2 days a week)

Salary Range: Up to £225k + Equity

Hawkwood is partnering with a world-leading frontier AI lab that is looking to hire a Senior HR Business Partner to work directly with the CTO.

This is an opportunity to join one of the more exciting AI companies out there and help shape their People strategy. You’ll be working with some of the most technical minds in the world, supporting them in solving problems that haven’t been tackled before.

They’re growing rapidly, so you’ll need to be comfortable operating in a fairly scrappy, start-up environment, while also helping to implement the infrastructure needed for an organisation that could scale to several thousand people over the next few years.

This is not a traditional HR Business Partner role. You’ll be supporting leading scientists at the forefront of technological innovation, acting as a true thought partner and helping shape how the business builds, develops, and leads its talent as it looks to double headcount this year.

What you’ll be doing

• Partner closely with the CTO and senior leaders on organisational design, talent strategy, and team effectiveness
• Coach and challenge leaders to raise the bar on management capability and performance
• Own and shape key people processes, including performance, compensation, and organisational planning
• Build scalable approaches that work today and continue to make sense as the business grows
• Navigate complexity and ambiguity, bringing clarity and structure where needed
• Support a deeply technical organisation in an environment that is still being built, with the opportunity to shape and evolve the playbook

What we're looking for

• Experience as a Senior HR Business Partner or People Director in high-growth environments
• Recent experience partnering with a CTO or senior technology leaders
• Experience working with research scientists or deeply technical engineering teams
• A track record of operating at pace in scale-ups, ideally alongside engineering or product organisations
• Strong judgement and the ability to operate without heavy structure or process
• Credibility with senior stakeholders and the confidence to challenge where needed
• A balance of strategic thinking and hands-on delivery
• Experience in complex environments where you’ve had to build and influence

We recognise how challenging this current job market is for candidates, and Hawkwood are therefore striving to provide the best candidate experience we can.

If you are interested in this opportunity, we kindly request that you apply via this LinkedIn advert, as opposed to sending us an email or LinkedIn direct message. We are eager to ensure that each candidate application is considered fairly, and receives a consistent experience.

Unfortunately, we cannot ensure this standard if you enquire about a role via email or LinkedIn message, as it falls outside of our established process.