What We Are Looking ForThis is a build-from-scratch senior individual contributor role for someone who wants to shape how a fast-growing AI company grows its people. You will be the team's thought partner on the hardest organizational questions, the person who designs and runs the research behind our answers, and the builder who turns that research into programs managers and ICs actually use.
You will diagnose the system, design the intervention, build it, deliver it, and stay accountable for whether it landed. You will work closely with the Head of People, who owns the executive-facing org strategy, so your energy goes into the design and delivery that makes that strategy real.
Key Responsibilities- Partner on the hard questions: Act as a genuine thought partner to the Head of People and functional leaders on org design, team health, and how we grow capability as we scale. Bring a point of view, back it with evidence, and pressure-test the easy answer
- Run the diagnostics: Design and field the research that tells us what is actually happening in the org on manager effectiveness, engagement, retention drivers, team health. Turn the data into a clear read and a recommended intervention
- Build manager enablement: Design and deliver the enablement that turns our managers into strong people leaders including onboarding for new managers, coaching skills, the hard-conversation playbook. Build for adoption, then measure whether adoption happened
- Grow our ICs: Activate our career ladders in the day-to-day. Build the development frameworks, growth conversations, and learning paths that make progression feel real and earned rather than a document people check a box against
- Lead change: Own the change management behind org-wide shifts new frameworks, new ways of working, new structures. Bring the method, build the coalition, and see it through the messy middle
- Ship, not just recommend: Own interventions end to end. Design them, build them, run them, and live with the results. Iterate on what the data tells you
Who You Are- Applied grounding: You have done research and interventions inside a real business and owned them through adoption, not studied an org from the outside or delivered a project and left before the outcome was known. You can walk us through an intervention you owned end to end, how you measured whether it worked, and one that did not work and what you learned
- Diagnostic rigor: You know how to design a real diagnostic and read the results honestly. A social sciences PhD (I/O psychology, organizational behavior, organizational sociology, or similar) is a highly preferred. You apply evidence based practices
- Builder and trainer: You have built enablement and development programs that people actually used, and you can stand in a room and move a group of managers. Bring examples with adoption data attached
- Change practitioner: You have run change inside a company as the internal owner by building coalition, absorbing friction, and staying through the part where it gets hard
- AI fluency: You use AI every day and can translate that fluency into how you research, build, and deliver. At Distyl this is the baseline, not a bonus
- Peer-level judgment: You operate as a thought partner to leaders. You can hold your own in a hard conversation, disagree well, and know when to bring rigor and when to move
What We Offer- The base salary range for this role is $170,000-$190,000, depending on experience, location, and level. In addition to base compensation, this role is eligible for meaningful equity, along with a comprehensive benefits package
- 100% coverage of medical, dental, and vision insurance for employee and dependents
- Flexible time off
- Retirement and financial planning benefits, including access to pre-tax HSA, FSA, and commuter accounts, 401(k), and financial coaching resources
- Comprehensive wellness benefits, including physical fitness, mental well-being, and fertility and family-building benefits through Carrot
- Complimentary in-office lunches and snacks provided
- Access to state-of-the-art AI models, generous usage of modern AI tools, and real-world business problems
- Ownership of high-impact projects across top enterprises
- A mission-driven, fast-moving culture that values curiosity, pragmatism, and excellence
Distyl has offices in San Francisco and New York. This role follows a hybrid collaboration model with 3+ days per week (Tuesday-Thursday) in-office.
