Head of Talent and People

As Head of Talent and People at Sardine, you lead and grow the global people function across talent acquisition, people operations, and HR business partnering. You own this end-to-end with a mandate to build pragmatic systems that scale with a fast-growing startup. This is a hands-on, player-coach role where you set direction and manage a full team while staying close enough to the work to source a hard-to-fill candidate yourself, sit in on a tough employee relations conversation, or dig into compensation bands directly.

What you'll do

• Lead and manage a team of recruiters, people operations and HR professionals, including any team leads within those functions
• Set goals, priorities, and capacity plans across recruitment and people operations
• Coach, develop, and performance-manage your team; build a bench of future team leads as the organization grows
• Own headcount planning across the organization
• Create the operating rhythm for the team (standups, pipeline reviews, OKRs, hiring sprints) without over-processizing a still-scrappy function
• Model the player-coach standard you expect from the team by jumping into the work alongside them
• Build and continuously improve the hiring process: interview loops, scorecards, calibration, and candidate experience
• Partner directly with the CEO and exec team on leadership hires, owning full-cycle recruiting for key leadership roles including sourcing, screening, and closing candidates yourself
• Build scalable sourcing channels and employer branding so Sardine competes for top talent without over-relying on agencies
• Track and report on hiring metrics (pipeline health, time-to-fill, offer acceptance) and adjust strategy accordingly
• Oversee the people operations lead and team who own the employee lifecycle (onboarding, offboarding, HRIS administration, benefits administration, and compliance)
• Manage and scale the existing performance review, compensation banding, leveling, and promotion cycle infrastructure; refine it as the company grows and keep it credible with employees and managers
• Ensure compliance with employment law across jurisdictions where Sardine has employees, in partnership with your people operations team
• Provide oversight and escalation support on vendor relationships (benefits brokers, payroll providers) that the people operations lead manages day to day
• Act as a trusted advisor to managers and the leadership team on organizational design, team structure, performance management, and employee relations
• Partner with leaders as an internal leadership coach
• Handle employee relations issues with sound judgment, discretion, and fairness

What you bring

• 12+ years in talent, recruiting, and people roles, with real depth in talent
• Experience running the people function at fast-paced, high-growth tech startups
• Proven experience managing a strong talent and people team, ideally spanning both recruitment and people operations/HR
• Generalist range: you are equally credible discussing offer negotiations, compensation bands, difficult employee relations issues, and performance management
• A player-coach mindset; you want to do the work, not just direct it
• Excellent judgment and discretion; you build trust quickly with founders, executives, and employees at every level
• Strong operating instincts: you build lightweight, scalable systems rather than heavy process
• Based in the Bay Area, with the ability to work from the Berkeley office at least 2 days every week

What we offer

• Generous compensation in cash and equity
• Early exercise for all options, including pre-vested
• Remote-first culture with work from anywhere flexibility
• Flexible paid time off and year-end break
• Health insurance, dental, and vision coverage for employees and dependents (US and Canada specific)
• 4% matching in 401k or RRSP (US and Canada specific)
• MacBook Pro delivered to your door
• One-time stipend to set up a home office (desk, chair, screen, etc.)
• Monthly meal stipend
• Monthly social meet-up stipend
• Annual health and wellness stipend
• Annual learning stipend

About Sardine

Sardine is the leading agentic risk platform for fighting financial crime. The integrated solution unifies data across risk teams to help organizations stop fraud in real time, prevent AI-driven attacks, and automate fraud and AML operations. Leading companies including FIS, GoDaddy, Intuit, Edward Jones, ZoomInfo, and Checkout.com rely on Sardine to secure and grow trust in their products.