{"id":1039827,"url":"https://alion.io/job/optiml-founding-people-lead-mfd-2","title":"Founding People Lead (m/f/d)","company":{"id":449956,"name":"Optiml","domain":"optiml.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/optiml","size_band":"11-50","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Join","truth_index":null},"role":"HR","role_family":"HR","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["London, United Kingdom"],"countries":["GB"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":68000,"max_usd":146000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":18},"experience_years_min":4,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Notion","optional":false},{"name":"Slack","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-07-13T09:31:43Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-07-13","last_verified_at":"2026-11-13T00:05:23Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":122,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":1,"flags":[],"days_open":121},"description":"About Optiml\nOptiml is transforming real estate with Real Estate Decision Intelligence (REDI), an AI-powered decision technology that helps decarbonize buildings while optimizing asset and portfolio financial performance.\nOur platform helps investors, owners, and asset managers make clearer capital allocation and decarbonisation decisions by translating complex regulatory, financial, and technical constraints into actionable renovation and investment plans.\nFounded as an ETH Zurich spin-off, Optiml launched its first product in April 2024 and is now scaling across Europe and the US, with teams based in Zurich, London, and across Germany/the EU. The company is backed by leading US and European investors, including Innovation Endeavors (the fund of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt), Planet A Ventures, KOMPAS, BitStone Capital, and The Bau Ventures. Following an oversubscribed €8M Seed round, we are accelerating product development and go-to-market execution.\nThe opportunity\nWe are looking for a Founding People Lead (m/f/d) to build Optiml's people function from the ground up. You will get the chance to treat People Ops like a product, designing automated systems instead of running the same process manually every time, so a lean team can operate like a much bigger one.\nYou will own the full people function end-to-end: recruiting and hiring across commercial, technical, and operational roles, onboarding, performance and HR operations.\nOptiml runs hub-and-spoke, with Zurich and London as physical hubs and the international and diverse team distributed across CH, DE and the UK. Culture here does not happen by default; it has to be designed. You will own how onboarding runs, how offsites are structured, and how a distributed team stays connected.\nYou will thrive here if you build from first principles, are comfortable with ambiguity, and see the people function as a system to design. You make people's decisions from the business need backwards and are a credible sparring partner for founders, not only an executor.\nTasks\nWhat you will own\nE2E Recruitment\nOwn recruiting and hiring end-to-end across commercial, technical, and operational roles\nPartner with hiring managers to define role requirements, build structured interview kits, and standardise candidate communication\nBuild and scale an automated people function\nBuild and automate onboarding, offboarding, and performance-review workflows using the AI-native stack (Notion, Slack, AI agents)\nOwn the people tech stack: evaluate and implement tools and automations that cut manual admin\nGrow and protect the culture\nDesign and own culture rituals and communication systems that work across a distributed, hub-and-spoke team\nPlan and help run team offsites and culture initiatives\nRun performance management (30/60/90s, probation reviews) and continuously automate the repeatable parts\nAct as the day-to-day point of contact for employees on culture, wellbeing, and people questions\nRun HR operations and compliance\nOwn HR administration and compliance across the CH, DE, and UK entities: contracts, amendments, employee records, and local employment law, partnering with the Head of Operations\nManage day-to-day employee relations - performance concerns, grievances, and sensitive situations - escalating appropriately\nSupport compensation and benefits administration: salary reviews, benchmarking, and benefits setup and renewal across entities\nRequirements\nRequirements\n4-7 years in People Ops or Engineering, HR or Recruitment, including time in a startup or high-paced environment - or a strong track record in an adjacent field (operations, consulting, founder's office) with a genuine pull toward people and culture work\nProven ownership of a full people function or key processes end-to-end: you have built structure from scratch without a roadmap and kept several workstreams running in parallel\nTrack record owning full-cycle recruiting across different roles and departments: sourcing, screening, and closing\nStrong stakeholder management and experience in building trusted relationships across a distributed team and with founders\nBusiness acumen, understanding the business model, stage, and priorities, and make people and hiring decisions from the business need backwards\nBuilder mentality: Using AI tools daily in your own workflow and are energized by removing manual, repeatable work \nTrack record setting up and improving HR operations end-to-end: HRIS, processes, policies, and compliance is ideal \nStrong written and verbal English; German as a nice-to-have \nBased in or able to work from London, and willing to travel to Zurich and offsite s\nBenefits\nDirect impact: Play a critical role in scaling a company transforming how real estate decarbonizes\nOwnership: Build and own the people function's tooling and systems from scratch, not inherit someone else's stack\nGrowth: Work closely with leadership and gain exposure across all company functions\nCulture: Join a mission-driven, high-performance, distributed team you will help shape\nLearning and development budget","description_format":"text","description_chars":5070,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":4,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[{"language":"English","level":"All levels","optional":false}]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Real Estate","PropTech","Real Estate AI","ESG & Carbon Accounting Software"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-18T18:26:51Z"},{"event":"close","at":"2026-09-21T21:51:03Z"},{"event":"reopen","at":"2026-11-08T23:13:24Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"GB","licensed_sponsor":true,"adverts_offering_sponsorship_24m":0,"sanctioned_now":false,"evidence":"Licensed UK visa sponsor (Skilled Worker)","filings_12m":null,"filings_prev_12m":null,"green_card_filings_12m":null,"median_offered_wage_usd":null,"route":"Skilled Worker","cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-11-12T09:37:45+00:00","sources":["UK Home Office: register of licensed sponsors (workers)"],"filings_for_role_12m":0}],"liveness":{"score":19,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.53,"p_room":0.36,"age_days":122,"expected_fill_days":80,"reasons":["conf:3","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-11-12T10:38:37Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/optiml-founding-people-lead-mfd-2","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/optiml-founding-people-lead-mfd-2.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-13T04:35:17Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":9718,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-14T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":449956},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=449956"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Foptiml-founding-people-lead-mfd-2"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"free","price":{"credits":0,"usd":0},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Foptiml-founding-people-lead-mfd-2"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Foptiml-founding-people-lead-mfd-2"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/optiml-founding-people-lead-mfd-2\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Foptiml-founding-people-lead-mfd-2"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":1039827}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"optiml.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":1039827},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); 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