People Programs LeadSan Francisco, CA • In-office (5 days/week) • Full-time
About the roleThis is our
first dedicated People Programs hire, reporting to the Head of Business Operations & People. You will own the systems that turn AfterQuery from a fast-growing team into a durable institution - comp philosophy and bands, leveling and career pathways, performance management, learning & development, and retention. You will partner directly with the founders, finance, and functional leaders to design programs that fit a company supporting a lean, talent-dense team and a much larger expert workforce, both held to a single quality bar.
You should be excited to tackle the talent opportunities specific to an AI-native company, and/or internalize the insights from the kind of work that Handshake AI, Block, and a small set of others have had to navigate as they reorient around AI products and AI-native talent. Compensation gravity is changing. Career ladders that worked five years ago do not. We need someone who has the analytical horsepower to redesign these systems from first principles, the taste to know what "excellent" looks like, and the operating instincts to roll programs out with efficiency, not bureaucracy.
What you'll do- Design and own AfterQuery's total compensation strategy - philosophy, bands, leveling, refresh cadence, and equity framework - and refresh it annually against benchmarks and market signals.
- Build the career pathways and leveling rubric that lets early-career operators see, in writing, what excellence at the next level looks like and how to get there.
- Stand up a performance management cycle that is fast, written, and useful - calibrated across the company without becoming a tax on managers.
- Design learning & development programs for a high-agency, early-career workforce - onboarding, manager training, technical depth, and feedback culture.
- Own retention as a measurable outcome: define the leading indicators, build the sensing systems, and run programs (recognition, internal mobility, comp refreshes) that move the number.
- Partner with leadership and finance on org design, headcount planning, and the comp/burn tradeoffs that shape the next 12-24 months.
- Treat People programs as products - instrument them, measure adoption and outcomes, and iterate. Bring the same analytical rigor you would to a P&L.
What we're looking for- 7-10+ years of experience across a combination of top-tier strategy consulting, analytical or strategy & operations roles, and core People / HR programs work.
- Time at companies known for strong People programs: Stripe, Block/Square, Netflix, Airbnb, Gusto, Bridgewater, or industry peers such as Mercor, Surge, or ScaleAI. You have seen what excellent looks like and have built (not just managed) at least one program end-to-end.
- Quantitative rigor that goes beyond comp benchmarks: you can model leveling decisions, attrition, comp band overlap, and equity refresh tradeoffs, and you reach for the spreadsheet before the slide.
- A point of view. You can tell a founder why they're wrong about comp transparency or a leveling decision, and bring the data and the company's values to back it up.
- Demonstrated ability to design programs from 01. Bonus points if you have done this through a strategy shift.
- A genuine interest in the AfterQuery thesis: that the future of AI is bottlenecked on human data, and that the workforce generating that data is the most important product decision the company makes.
- High agency, low ego, written-first. Comfortable in a 5-day in-office SF environment that prizes speed and direct feedback.
Bonus- You've been on the org-design side of an AI pivot or step-change in business model.
- You've designed compensation programs for a workforce that includes both full-time employees and a significant expert/contractor population.
Why AfterQuery- You'll build the People function for one of the most consequential companies in the AI training-data category.
- A real seat at the strategy table - comp, leveling, and org design will shape product velocity and burn, and you'll own that.
- A small, dense team with high standards. We hire people we'd be sad to lose, and we work hard to keep them.
