Director, people partnering

GiveDirectly has delivered more than $1B in cash directly to 2+ million people living in poverty across 15 countries since 2011. We believe cash transfers are one of the most scalable, cost-effective, and dignified forms of aid, with the research to back it up. Our work has been covered by The Economist, NPR, TED, and The Washington Post. We are one of Time100’s Most Influential Companies of 2026.

Our culture is candid, analytical, and non-hierarchical. We support high ownership and real professional growth. Curious about what it's really like to work here? Read our values and hear from the people who do. If they resonate, this could be a great fit!

About this Role

We are currently planning for a significant increase in scale, and we are building the People function that can carry it.

This is a new role with two halves. First half: you will be the dedicated people partner to our Global Shared Services (GSS) teams [~200 employees], who do not have one today, working primarily with people leaders on structure, workforce planning, talent, and the people decisions that come with growth. You will partner with and coach senior leaders across GSS, up to VP level, including those who are strong operators still growing as people leaders. Second half: you will build how we handle behavior and performance concerns across the organization: the standards, the decision framework, and the enablement that lets people managers and our HR teams in the field handle them well.

The first year is weighted toward that build, with partnering also focused on performance and talent management as the most pressing needs. As the standards land, the balance shifts toward deeper partnering, while you continue to own the employee relations model.

The reason for this weight: the employee relations build is our most acute gap today, but should not be construed as a ceiling of the job. Over time, the partnering half opens up well beyond performance and conduct into org design, workforce planning, talent, career development, and the full range of people strategy for our global functions. We're hiring a broad, senior people partner who can build the ER model as their first major deliverable, not an employee relations specialist. If your instinct on reading this is that the ER work is the whole job, this role probably isn't the right fit, and the reverse is also true: if you're only interested in the strategic partnering and not the build, year one will frustrate you.

Job type

Full-time

Reports to

Head of People

Location

Remote, with a requirement to overlap with an East Africa timezone by at least 3 hours, and meaningful overlap with US Eastern hours. We can only employ people in certain places at the moment, so it's worth checking our current list of eligible countries to see if yours is included. If you're based elsewhere, it's not an automatic no, but do flag it early with your recruiter. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of employment visas in the U.S. or U.K. at this time.

Travel

Approximately 3-4 trips per year, including at least one to a country of operation and one to a key in-person leadership moment, with occasional additional travel as sensitive or time-critical situations require.

What you'll do

• Partner with our Global team: Act as the trusted advisor to GSS leaders (managers up to VPs) on anything involving their people: how their teams are structured, who they need, who is at risk, and what is not working. Some of this is work the Head of People holds today and will hand over as you establish credibility.
• Lead org design and workforce planning for global functions as we scale: structure, role definition, levels, sizing and sequencing, in partnership with function leads, Finance and Talent Acquisition.
• Own talent and succession for the population: who is ready for more, who is a flight risk, and where the single points of failure sit.
• Partner on performance and compensation decisions for global staff, including calibration, promotion cases and band placement.
• Coach senior leaders, on their own leadership as much as on their teams.
• Lead people-side change for global functions: restructures, leadership transitions, and the team-level fallout of both.
• Act as the People representative for global staff, holding employment decisions within our framework in the way HR Managers do in their countries.
• Coach global managers through behavior and performance conversations, rather than taking those conversations from them.
• Build how we handle behavior and underperformance: Define what these categories actually are and communicate them across the organization, so that a concern can be routed rather than defaulting into a disciplinary process.
• Audit how each country handles cases end to end, and write one global standard per category covering intake, escalation, who is responsible at each stage, and documentation. Build from what already works and flex only where local law genuinely requires it.
• Build the employment decision framework with Legal, including a delegated authority matrix setting out who decides what and when, and the escalation route when a case falls outside it.
• Design and deliver enablement for the three groups who have to use all of this: managers, HR Managers, and staff.
• Work with our central investigations function to stand up a single record of outcomes, so that patterns and inconsistencies become visible.
• Within your first 90 days, recommend who should support behavior and underperformance cases in each country, and what that requires.
• Hold consistency across the organization: Coach HR Managers through cases in their countries, and act as the technical escalation point when they need one.
• Provide the People input at triage on which category a concern belongs in.
• Watch outcomes as they accumulate, and raise it when something looks inconsistent: comparable facts resolving differently, one country diverging, or a pattern clustering around a team or a manager.

What this role is not

• Not an investigations role. Misconduct investigations sit with our Central Intake and Investigations Hub. We would want you to have investigative capability we can draw on for surge, or for cases where the hub is conflicted, but it is not the job and someone who wants to investigate will be frustrated here.
• Not a caseload role. Cases in country belong to managers and to HR Managers. Your value is standards, judgment and partnership, not throughput.
• Not the owner of performance management or manager development. Those sit with our Talent Management function. You define what managers need to know about employee relations; they own the curriculum and the channel.

Who we're looking for

Required:

• 7+ years of HR business partner experience with executive and senior leaders, including coaching leaders who were strong in their domain but needed to grow as people leaders, and holding a position when it was unpopular.
• You have done this in a scale-up or a major transformation. An organization that was growing fast, restructuring, or both, where the systems you needed did not exist and you built them while the volume was already arriving. We are not looking for steady-state operating experience.
• Demonstrated experience building employee relations standards, policy or frameworks from scratch or close to it, and getting them adopted across multiple countries or business units.
• A mix of high-growth commercial or tech experience and international or mission-driven experience. The role needs the speed and build instinct of the first and the operating complexity of the second, and we think it is hard to do well with only one.
• Experience holding or closely advising on disciplinary and capability decisions, including dismissals, in more than one jurisdiction, with the judgment to know when to bring in counsel.
• A track record of influencing without formal authority in a matrixed organization.
• Judgment and steadiness. You can hold a position with a senior leader, be wrong in public when you are, and stay trusted either way.

Preferred:

• Experience operating in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Experience building a people function, or a major part of one, from the ground up.
• Formal training or real experience in workplace investigations, as reserve capability rather than a core part of the role.
• Experience designing manager enablement content.

Compensation

At GiveDirectly, we strive to pay our employees generously and equitably. We use an accredited third party salary aggregator to calculate what we believe to be competitive pay based on role, location, and cost of living. We also have a no negotiation policy to ensure we are paying staff equitably across roles. Read more about our compensation philosophy here.

Unless otherwise noted, the benefits stipend may be used to cover benefits or taken as additional taxable income.

United States

Base Salary: $134,400

Bonus at Target Performance: 15% (~$20,160, with potential for upside. For reference, with the organization’s current performance multiplier, this amount would be $23,587 in 2025)

Estimated Total Compensation at Target: $154,560+

Annual Benefits Stipend: $21,393

United Kingdom

Base Salary: £94,695

Bonus at Target Performance: 15% (~£14,191, with potential for upside. For reference, with the organization’s current performance multiplier, this amount would be £16,603 in 2025)

Estimated Total Compensation at Target: £108,796+

Annual Benefits Stipend: £2,760

Kenya

Base Salary: $106,282

Bonus at Target Performance: 15% (~$15,942, with potential for upside. For reference, with the organization’s current performance multiplier, this amount would be $18,652 in 2025)

Estimated Total Compensation at Target: $122,224+

Annual Benefits Stipend: $8,453

This role is fully remote, so if you are not based in the US, UK or Kenya, we will share an estimated salary benchmark for the country you are based in during the hiring process.

Working at GiveDirectly

GiveDirectly is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants are considered for employment without regard to the person’s race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

Flagging for US applicants: We invite you to "Know Your Rights" as an applicant.

Commitment to Safeguarding

As a global organization working with communities to eliminate extreme poverty, GiveDirectly takes the safeguarding of its recipients, staff, and partners seriously. To that end, GiveDirectly is a member of the Misconduct Disclosure Scheme, and will systematically check with previous employers about any abuse or misconduct related matters involving potential new hires. We may also employ other robust pre-hire screens, including in-depth reference checks, criminal background checks, and sanctions screens.

These efforts help us continue to build and maintain trust with the communities we work with, and prevent abuse to our recipients and staff.

GD is committed to observing all local, national and international laws that protect people and basic human rights of all. GD is committed to a policy of “zero tolerance when it comes to preventing, reporting, or responding to any form of abuse or exploitation.” and expects anyone who works for GD to uphold the protection and safeguarding of our recipients as a priority.

Reasonable Accommodations

We are committed to fostering an inclusive and accessible work environment. If you require any accommodations during the application or interview process, or to perform the essential functions of the role, please email us at careers@givedirectly.org with the email subject “Accommodation Needed”. We will work with you to ensure reasonable accommodations are made to support your needs.

Referrals

Know the right person for this role? Please consider referring them. We offer a reward of $3,000 for a Senior Manager or above role, and $500 for a Manager role, paid if we end up hiring your referral. Thank you for sending great people our way!