Senior People Partner

SENIOR PEOPLE PARTNER Cloudscaler | London | People Team | Reports to the Chief People Officer | £55,000–£75,000 Someone has to own the People initiative that doesn’t fit neatly into anyone’s week and the case nobody else should be handling. That someone is you — not as an escalation point, but as the person who runs the day-to-day of this function. THE MOMENT Cloudscaler is 130 people today. We’ll be 170 by the end of this year, and roughly double again in 2027. The People function is being built in real time alongside that growth, rather than inherited from someone who left years ago. You’ll be the first hire into the People team. For roughly your first year you’ll be the only People professional alongside the CPO, which means running the whole day-to-day of the function: the hardest casework and initiatives, and the operational core that keeps everything moving. A People Partner is planned to join later in 2027, and at that point the operational administration moves to them. This is also a role built with room to grow. As the team expands beyond that second hire, we expect this role to take on day-to-day operational leadership of the People Partner practice, but that isn’t the shape of it on day one. WHAT MAKES THIS DIFFERENT In most People teams, the senior generalist is just a People Partner with a harder case queue. Here, the difference is ownership, not just difficulty. - Complex casework: Rather than simply handling harder cases, you’ll own the most complex cases end to end, with no hand back. - People initiatives: Rather than contributing to initiatives someone else drives, you’ll own them from design through to embedding. - Decision-making: Rather than escalating ambiguity upward, you’ll make the sensible call and document your reasoning. - CPO partnership: Rather than acting in a support role to the CPO, you’ll be an operational partner they can confidently delegate to. To be clear about the level: The CPO still designs the People strategy and the systems architecture. You own how it runs day to day, and you’re trusted to run a whole initiative, not just a case. That is a different job to People Partner, not a bigger version of the same one. THE ROLE You’ll sit in the People team reporting to the Chief People Officer. Three strands make up the job: - Casework: The employee relations situations with the most complexity or sensitivity land with you, start to finish. - Initiatives: When the CPO needs a piece of work owned (a policy rollout, a wellbeing programme, a piece of the reward or benefits agenda), you take it from design through to something that runs. - Operations: Until the People Partner joins, you’ll own payroll and benefits administration, onboarding, screening and security clearances, and keeping Rippling accurate. When the People Partner joins, they’ll report to the CPO. You won’t manage them formally, but you’ll lead their handover, you’ll be the person they come to first, and your judgement will set the standard for how this function operates day to day. WHERE THE ROLE STARTS AND STOPS New roles get vague, so here is the boundary as we see it today. Yours - The most complex and sensitive employee relations casework, end to end. - Full ownership of People initiatives, from design to embedding. - Acting as the CPO’s operational partner on ambiguous or cross-cutting problems. - Until the People Partner joins (planned for later in 2027): - Payroll and benefits administration, including the monthly payroll cycle in Rippling and Mintago. - Pre-onboarding, onboarding and probation. - Background screening in Zinc. - Security clearance coordination. - Rippling data quality, workflows and reporting. - Our working groups and committees. - Once the People Partner joins: - A structured handover of the operational core. - Day-to-day guidance for the People Partner. Shared - Ashby, which Talent Acquisition owns. You’ll work in it from offer through to start date on every hire until the People Partner joins, and on senior hires after that. - Mentoring and supporting the People Partner on their casework and initiatives, once they join. Not yours - Recruitment delivery, which sits with Talent Acquisition. - The design of the People strategy, the operating model and the systems architecture, which sit with the CPO. - Formal line management of the People Partner, who will report to the CPO. THE STACK - Rippling: Our single source of truth. Until the People Partner joins you’ll run it day to day, including the monthly payroll cycle, data quality and workflows, and you’ll use its reporting at a level that supports whole initiatives. - Zinc: Background screening. You’ll run checks for every new joiner until the People Partner joins, and stay close to the senior and sensitive hires after that. - Ashby: Owned by Talent Acquisition. You’ll work in it from offer through to start date on the hires you’re responsible for. - Claude: A daily tool here. You’ll use it for casework preparation, drafting policy and communications, and pulling together the analysis behind an initiative. - Mintago: Our employee benefits and financial wellbeing platform (pensions, salary sacrifice and financial advice). You’ll administer it and keep enrolment accurate until the People Partner takes it on. WHAT YOU’LL DO - Own the hardest casework. You’ll run our most complex and sensitive employee relations cases end to end, with the CPO there to sense-check rather than take over. - Own initiatives, not tasks. You’ll take a People initiative from a rough brief to something that’s running and embedded, rather than handing it back once the interesting part is done. - Run the operational core. Until the People Partner joins, you’ll own the monthly payroll cycle in Rippling, benefits administration including Mintago, onboarding, background screening and security clearances. Accurate, on time, and documented as you go. - Hand it over well. When the People Partner arrives, you’ll give them a working system and a clear handover, then stay the person they come to first and the judgement others in the function measure themselves against. - Partner with senior leaders. You’ll be credible with leaders on the most difficult conversations: complex change, capability, and situations without a clean playbook. - Use AI properly. You’ll use Claude daily to take time out of your own week, checking anything that touches a decision about a person and owning the outcome. - Improve what you find. You’ll spot the gaps in policy, process or practice before anyone else does, and bring the CPO a considered view on the fix, not just the problem. WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE AT 12 MONTHS - You’re running the most complex ER cases with confidence, and the CPO isn’t being pulled into them. - At least one or two People initiatives have gone from a rough brief to something genuinely embedded, owned by you. - Payroll, benefits, onboarding and clearances run accurately and on time, and every process is documented well enough to hand over. - You’ve helped shape the People Partner hire, so the handover is ready when they land. - Senior leaders treat you as a credible operational partner, not an escalation point. - You’ve made and documented sensible calls in genuinely ambiguous situations, and they’ve held up. - The CPO can hand you an ambiguous problem and trust it gets shaped properly. WHO WE’RE LOOKING FOR - Deep employee relations experience. You’ve run complex disciplinaries, grievances and change situations yourself, and you know exactly when to escalate and when not to. CIPD qualification, or solid progress towards it, is welcome. - A track record of owning initiatives. You can point to work you took from a brief to something that actually ran, not just a project you contributed to. - Hands-on with the operational detail. You’ve owned or closely supported a payroll cycle, benefits administration and onboarding, and you’re comfortable being accountable for their accuracy while also carrying the senior work. - Credible with senior leaders. You can hold your own in a difficult conversation with someone under real pressure and be listened to. - Comfortable operating near-autonomously. You don’t need a playbook for everything. You make a sensible call, write it down, and check it with the CPO afterwards. - Ready to grow into people leadership. You won’t formally manage anyone at the start, but you’ll induct and guide the People Partner when they join, and you should want to lead a team as the structure catches up. - Discreet and organised at volume. Complex casework and live initiatives, often at the same time. You’ll need a system, and it can’t be your memory. THE HONEST PART This role sits in an odd space for now: senior in scope and judgement, without a team underneath it yet. Until the People Partner joins later in 2027, you’ll also be the whole operational team, so a payroll deadline and a complex grievance can land in the same week. That eases as the function grows, but it means the authority you carry day to day has to come from the quality of your work, not a job title. You are not designing the People strategy or the systems architecture. The CPO does that. What you get instead is real ownership of the hardest cases and the initiatives that matter, a close working relationship with the CPO, and a genuine path toward leading the People Partner practice as it grows. This probably isn’t for you if you want a formal team from day one, or if you’d rather leave payroll and onboarding to someone else. It probably is for you if you want to prove you can run this function well enough, top to bottom, that a team gets built around you. If that sounds like the challenge you’ve been looking for, let’s talk. Cloudscaler are proud to be an equal opportunity employer, committed to equal opportunities regardless of gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ancestry, age, marital status, disability, parental status, religion or medical history. If you require reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process or within the workplace, please let us know when you speak to our Talent Acquisition team or contact [email protected] at the earliest opportunity.