About the role

The Opportunity

This global technology business is entering an important stage in its growth and evolution.

Following rapid growth over the past three years, the focus is now less on adding headcount and more on building the operational foundations, leadership capability and organisational discipline required for the next stage of performance.
The business is looking for a Chief People Officer who can operate well beyond a traditional People and Culture remit.
Reporting directly to the CEO and working closely with the founders and Executive Leadership Team, you will help move the organisation from founder-led to leader-led. You will have the support of a CEO who is fully behind this and needs a partner to help build the business he knows it can become.
The mandate centres on strengthening the remote operating model, lifting leadership and organisational performance, and leading significant organisational change as the business adapts to a technology market being reshaped by AI.
This role also needs someone who can bring greater energy, urgency and pace to change. You will quickly identify where the organisation is getting stuck, focus people on what matters and create visible momentum.
At its core, this role is about improving organisational performance through people, leadership and operating systems.

The Company

This is a global software business with strong open-source foundations and a mission centred on ethical technology, privacy and giving organisations greater control over their data.
It has grown from a small founder-led company into an approximately 80-person organisation, with a fully remote workforce across New Zealand and Europe.
That growth has outpaced some of the systems and leadership practices required at its current scale.
The next stage is about creating greater clarity, stronger leadership, faster decision-making and clearer accountability across countries and time zones.
AI is also changing the capabilities the business needs, how roles are designed and how work gets done. The leadership team sees this as an organisational challenge, not simply a technology one.
The opportunity is to help build the organisation required for that future while protecting the mission and entrepreneurial thinking that shaped the company.

The Role

Build how the company works

One of your first challenges will be strengthening the operating foundations of a truly remote global organisation.
You will establish clearer decision rights, leadership rhythms and accountability. You will embed practical remote and asynchronous ways of working, improve how teams communicate, document, prioritise and execute, and remove organisational friction that is slowing decisions and delivery.
The aim is not more process. It is greater clarity, faster action and better execution.

Raise the leadership bar

The organisation needs a meaningful uplift in leadership capability and performance.
You will work directly with the CEO and leadership teams to strengthen management capability, set clearer expectations around performance and contribution, and build greater ownership and accountability.
You will improve how leaders communicate priorities, decisions and change across a fully remote organisation. You will coach and challenge senior leaders, address underperformance earlier and help the business make difficult decisions without unnecessary delay.
The challenge is to retain the openness, purpose and entrepreneurial energy of the founder-led culture while shifting towards clearer performance expectations, greater accountability and a stronger growth mindset.

Reimagine the organisation for AI

AI is not being treated as another technology rollout.
The business is asking bigger questions about what work should remain human-led, what can be augmented and what should be automated.
You will help turn those questions into organisational decisions by redesigning roles, teams and workflows, identifying the capabilities the company will need next, leading reskilling and workforce planning, and helping leaders navigate significant change.
You will connect that change to measurable improvements in speed, performance and organisational output.

Lead the global People function

Alongside the wider organisational mandate, you will lead the practical People and employment requirements of a global business.
This includes employee relations, remuneration, recruitment, performance, organisational change, policies, systems and employment risk across multiple jurisdictions.
This is a hands-on executive role.
You may be shaping organisational design with the CEO in the morning and working directly through a complex performance matter later that day.

The Fit

You have built this before

You have experienced the point where a growing technology company needs to become more deliberate about how it operates.
You may be a Chief People Officer, VP People, People Director, organisational effectiveness or transformation leader, or come from a broader COO-style background.
The title matters less than what you have actually changed. You have built high-performance cultures across remote or globally distributed teams and bring experience from technology, SaaS, software or digital environments.
You have built operating models and organisational systems in a growth environment, lifted leadership capability and accountability, and led organisational design, restructuring and significant change.
You can demonstrate where you have increased pace, created momentum and delivered measurable outcomes. You bring multi-country People and employment experience and can move comfortably between executive design and hands-on delivery. Founder-led and scale-up experience will be highly relevant.

You are a change-maker

This role needs someone who wants to change things, not protect the status quo.
You are commercially minded and interested in organisational performance, not simply the mechanics of HR.
You bring energy through action. You identify what needs to change, create urgency around the right priorities and keep things moving when you meet resistance.
You are comfortable building what does not yet exist, operating through ambiguity, making difficult calls and taking ownership for the outcome.
You can challenge a CEO and senior leadership team while maintaining trust, and you use evidence to understand whether change is working.
Most importantly, you are an operator. You build, test, adjust and make things happen.

You can lead globally

You must be based in New Zealand and comfortable working flexibly across New Zealand and European time zones.
The role is fully remote, with Auckland preferred but not essential.
If you want the opportunity to reshape how a global remote technology company leads, performs and organises itself, this is a rare chance to do it from the executive table.

Please note, only candidates currently based in New Zealand with valid working rights will be considered.