Director of People Operations

Location Remote (United States) Employment Type Full time Location Type Remote Department People About Us Higharc is a VC-backed startup that is changing how new homes are designed and built. Join a founding team who’ve shipped products for Autodesk, Electronic Arts, Nike, and Apple. We have raised a total of $83M with support from top-notch venture capital firms and more than 18 strategic investors—industry leaders in construction, building products manufacturing, and distribution. Higharc is seeking a strategic Director of People Operations to own the full employee journey and build the infrastructure that keeps a high-performing, remote-first team moving at speed. This role reports to executive leadership and is critical to how Higharc scales without losing the culture that got us here. What You'll Do You’ll be leading a team responsible for everything from culture and performance to compliance, L&D, and IT. This is not a maintenance role. You’re building a proactive, scalable People Ops function during a critical period of growth, and you’ll do it with a bias toward clarity over process and velocity over bureaucracy. You’ll partner closely with the Directors of Recruiting and Events to ensure a consistent, coherent employee experience across all touch points. You’ll also serve as the internal voice of change — a calm, clear communicator when the company shifts, and the person who ensures our remote-first culture is a superpower, not a liability. Every system you build should ask: does this give people more confidence to move fast, or does it make them stop and ask permission? If it’s the latter, it doesn’t belong here. Expect to: Build and own the People Ops roadmap, translating company objectives into programs that scale with how Higharc actually operates — high trust, high accountability, high autonomy. Lead, mentor, and develop the People Ops team — setting clear KPIs, removing blockers, and investing in their growth. Evolve our remote-first culture with systems and programs built around accountability, autonomy, and resilience — the kind that make distributed work a competitive edge. Refine our performance management and engagement programs to create a culture where high standards and high trust coexist. Build and lead a manager training and support program so our people leads are effective, consistent, and equipped to build strong teams. Oversee IT systems, benefits, compliance, and help desk — the operational infrastructure that makes everything else run. Serve as the point person for organizational change and internal communication, ensuring shifts land clearly and with context. Partner cross-functionally with Recruiting and Events to ensure consistency across all employee experience workstreams. About You You protect culture the same way an engineer protects a codebase — deliberately, with an eye toward future maintainability. You have strong opinions about what “good” looks like at a remote-first company, and you’ve built the systems to back it up. You think in ripple effects: a change in benefits touches retention touches hiring, and you model for that. You're not here to add process. You're here to design guardrails that make people more confident, not more dependent on the HR desk. You have: 7–10 years in People Ops or HR, with a proven track record of building programs that scale — not just inheriting and maintaining them At least 2–3 years leading a People Ops team in a high-growth tech environment Significant experience leading distributed teams and navigating the real cultural and operational challenges of remote-first work A data-driven approach to people decisions — you use engagement scores, retention trends, and performance data to iterate, not just report The communication skills to translate a difficult policy change or comp redesign into a clear, human message that lands well across the company Deep familiarity with modern HR tech: Lattice, Rippling, Slack, Notion, Asana, and Google Workspace Working at Higharc Higharc has been remote first since our founding in 2018. We offer flexible hours so you can do your best work without missing out on life. Higharc offers competitive salaries with significant equity, in a fast-growing, well-funded company. Personal healthiness is an important value for us- we provide comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage, with unlimited PTO, and meaningful maternity/paternity leave to all U.S based employees that are full-time. You'll also have access to other big-company benefits such like short and long-term disability plans and a 401K. Haven't worked remotely before? We provide a stipend to create the ideal home office. #J-18808-Ljbffr