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Director, Talent Management
Contract type
Ongoing
Work mode
Remote · United States, United Kingdom, Kenya
Experience
Senior · 7+ years
Job description
A senior talent management leader who will build GiveDirectly's first talent management function, owning performance management and its link to pay, onboarding, manager and leadership development, learning, talent planning and succession, and employee listening and engagement.
At a glance
- Employment
- Full-time · Employee (employment agreement)
- Work mode
- Remote · United States, United Kingdom, Kenya
- Pay
- USD 134,400 / year
What you'll do
- Within your first 90 days, assess what exists today across these areas, recommend the sequencing for the first year, and agree to it with the Head of People.
- Set the vision and multi-year roadmap for talent management across the areas it covers, and sequence the work against the People roadmap.
- Propose the team around it, and decide what we build in-house and what we buy or borrow.
- Connect talent management to workforce planning, compensation, and recruitment, in partnership with the Head of People, Finance, and function leaders.
- Join the performance system redesign early, alongside the Head of People, and own it as it moves into execution: a system that produces reliable, calibrated outputs to inform merit increases, connected to our new salary bands.
- Make the system worth using, not a check-the-box exercise: one that helps managers hold better performance and development conversations and gives employees clarity on expectations, feedback, and growth.
- Build calibration and the data around it so ratings and merit decisions stay consistent and fair across countries, currencies, and manager quality.
- Set a clear global standard for handling low performance that doesn't default to a misconduct process, and equip managers to use it.
- Iterate the system through multiple cycles, using calibration, outcome data, and feedback from managers and employees to improve it.
- Revamp onboarding ahead of our next wave of hiring: own the content and experience for new hires and their managers, working with People Ops on process and systems.
- Build a foundational manager program and the tools behind it: feedback, coaching, difficult conversations, and performance management.
- Extend into leadership development and broader learning as the function matures.
- Plan the values retreat with an external facilitator and our executive sponsor, and own what carries into daily work afterward.
- Get a read on listening and engagement today, covering what we hear, where it goes, and what should change, and use it to build our employee listening strategy.
- Stand up talent planning and succession as the organization matures.
What we're looking for
- 7+ years in talent management, performance, or organizational design roles, including time leading a function or a major part of one.
- You have designed a performance system, not only administered one. You can show how ratings connected to pay and what you changed after the first cycle.
- You have kept a rating and pay system fair across contexts with different currencies, labor markets, and manager quality.
- You are a hands-on builder. You have built talent management programs and systems from scratch, or close to it, in a start-up or scale-up: performance, onboarding, manager development, or a whole function, where what you needed did not exist and you built it while the volume was already arriving.
- You think in systems. You can show how a change in one part of a talent system, such as ratings, calibration, pay, promotion, or onboarding, shows up in the others, and you reason from the underlying problem rather than copying another organization's template.
- You design with change management in mind from the start. You plan for how managers and employees in different countries and cultures will adopt a new program or system as part of the design, not as a rollout step afterward, and can show how you knew it stuck rather than being worked around.
- You have deep experience in at least two of onboarding, manager development, and employee engagement or listening, and working experience in the third. You have built programs and content people actually used, and can show how you knew they worked.
- A track record of joining a major project already in motion, taking it over, and working through disagreement with a senior partner, and of influencing without formal authority in a matrixed organization.
- Judgment and prioritization. You decide what slips and say so plainly.
Nice to have
- Experience in a mission-driven or international organization, ideally alongside high-growth commercial or tech experience.
- Experience working across multiple countries, including sub-Saharan Africa.
- Experience working with external facilitators, consultants, or vendors, and knowing what to hand off and what to hold.
- Comfort using data (survey, performance, calibration) to make decisions, and knowing when the numbers mislead.
- Exposure to compensation design or close work with a total rewards team.
- Professional French or Portuguese.
Your team
People
The People function, which is being built to carry a significant increase in scale; this is its first senior talent management role.
Benefits
- Annual Benefits Stipend (may be used to cover benefits or taken as additional taxable income)
- Bonus Target: 15%
Apply
About GiveDirectly
Give people money and trust them to decide what they need
GiveDirectly delivers cash directly to people living in poverty and crisis. Since 2011 it has delivered more than $1B to 2+ million people across 15 countries, with rigorous research on results. The team spans 20+ countries and 69 languages, with a candid, analytical, non-hierarchical culture and extensive integration of technology into field processes.
Mission
To fight poverty by delivering cash directly to people living in poverty and crisis, and to make cash the benchmark for aid.
Key facts
- 20+ countries
- 2011
- International cash transfer / humanitarian aid
- Delivered more than $1B in cash directly to 2+ million people living in poverty and crisis across 15 countries
- Expects to hit $1B in revenue in 2026 with significant growth forecast for 2027
- Building a new technology stack and operating model designed for a roughly 10x change in scale
- Multiple Randomized Control Trials completed and others in progress
- One of Time100's Most Influential Companies of 2026
- Team spans 20+ countries and 69 languages
- Member of the Misconduct Disclosure Scheme
What they value
- Recipients first
- Team next
- Be proactively candid
- Create positive energy
- Think rigorously; act quickly
- Know yourself and grow
- Accept reality. Propose solutions.
- Be productively ambitious