Founding People and Talent Leader (backed by Y Combinator, $5M+ ARR, $23M+ raised)
1 day ago
San Francisco
Legion is hiring a Founding People and Talent Leader to build the talent engine and people operating system behind a category-defining healthcare company. You will be the senior-most owner of People and Talent at Legion. You will own the entire employee journeyfrom the first outbound recruiting message through interviews, closing, relocation, onboarding, performance, development, compensation, engagement, and eventual offboarding. This is an unusually broad, hands-on leadership role. In the same week, you might personally source an exceptional AI engineer, close a senior operator, coach a manager through difficult feedback, review payroll, coordinate an employee's move to San Francisco, improve onboarding, and produce a company dinner or offsite. You will not inherit a large recruiting or HR team. During the first 1218 months, you are the team: the lead recruiter, People operator, culture builder, employee-experience owner, and trusted adviser to the founders. You will build systems and eventually hire support only where the company's scale and bottlenecks justify it. The right person combines the talent instincts of an elite startup recruiter, the operational precision of an exceptional People leader, the judgment of a trusted executive partner, and the warmth of someone who genuinely enjoys creating an extraordinary place to work. This is not a role for someone who wants to advise from a distance, manage a team of recruiters, or hand execution to vendors. We need a player-coach who can build the strategy, open Ashby, source candidates, close offers, fix broken processes, and personally make sure every new employee has a laptop and a great first day. Responsibilities and deliverables include owning Legion's company-wide talent plan, personally running full-cycle recruiting, building exceptional outbound pipelines, creating a rigorous hiring standard for every role, becoming a compelling closer, delivering a strong candidate experience, building Legion's employer brand, owning recruiting operations and analytics, measuring recruiting performance, owning the complete employee lifecycle, running reliable payroll and payment operations, owning the operating relationship with People vendors, administering and improving benefit programs, partnering with finance and leadership on compensation philosophy, building pragmatic People infrastructure, coordinating with qualified counsel to manage employment requirements, handling employee relations, building a high-quality performance system, helping leadership design the organization as it scales, coaching founders and managers, owning relocation to San Francisco, making every employee operationally ready on Day 1, building an onboarding experience, owning the San Francisco employee and workplace experience, creating memorable internal experiences, owning the operating details behind company events, building effective internal communications, listening to the organization, using AI aggressively and responsibly, building the People and Talent team over time. You'll be successful if you understand Legion's business, team, open roles, hiring constraints, compensation practices, People systems, vendors, organizational risks, and most urgent operational gaps within your first 30 days; every priority opening has a clear scorecard, calibrated interview process, accountable hiring manager, sourcing strategy, recruiting owner, and realistic closing plan; within 90 days, Legion has consistent outbound pipelines for its hardest roles, a disciplined weekly talent review, reliable recruiting data, and substantially less founder time lost to scheduling and recruiting administration; candidates move through Legion's process quickly, encounter prepared interviewers, receive clear communication, and leave with a stronger impression of the company regardless of the final decision; Legion consistently hires unusually capable people rather than merely filling seats; offers close because candidates understand Legion's mission, expectations, upside, risks, compensation, equity, working environment, and the extraordinary opportunity in front of them; every new hire arrives in San Francisco with relocation barriers addressed and begins Day 1 with the necessary equipment, access, schedule, context, relationships, and expectations; payroll, benefits, employee records, compliance deadlines, equity coordination, equipment, onboarding, and offboarding operate reliably without recurring surprises or manual heroics; managers give clearer feedback, address performance problems earlier, interview more effectively, and make better organizational decisions because of your coaching and systems; Legion develops a practical compensation, leveling, performance, and promotion framework that employees and managers can understand without creating unnecessary bureaucracy; company events and rituals strengthen trust, connection, energy, and shared purpose rather than feeling like obligatory corporate programming; you identify organizational, compliance, employee-relations, and retention risks before they become crises, and leadership trusts you to handle sensitive situations with discretion and courage; you build a People function that is highly responsive and deeply human while remaining operationally rigorous, analytically grounded, and appropriately lean; AI and automation eliminate meaningful administrative work without degrading candidate experience, employee trust, data security, or decision quality; twelve months from now, Legion has measurably higher talent density, a more predictable recruiting engine, stronger managers, faster onboarding, clearer expectations, and substantially less reactive People work sitting with the founders. Ideal background and skills include 5+ years of progressively responsible experience spanning recruiting, talent leadership, People Operations, HR, or organizational leadership at high-growth technology companies; experience serving as the first, early, or senior-most People and Talent hire at a venture-backed startupideally while scaling from approximately 2550 employees to 100150+; demonstrated success personally sourcing, assessing, and closing exceptional passive candidates for difficult roles; strong technical-recruiting ability across AI, engineering, data, and product, plus the versatility to recruit consumer growth, operations, clinical leadership, finance, and executive talent; evidence that your hires became high-performing, durable members of the organizationnot simply that you hit an annual hiring number; experience building recruiting infrastructure from zero or rebuilding an inconsistent system: workforce planning, scorecards, structured interviews, interviewer training, referrals, sourcing operations, analytics, employer branding, and closing; hands-on People Operations experience across payroll, benefits, HRIS, employee records, equity administration, onboarding, offboarding, leaves, policies, vendor management, and compliance; sound working knowledge of California and multi-state employment practices, with the judgment to identify when specialized employment, immigration, tax, or benefits counsel is required; experience managing sensitive employee-relations matters, investigations, performance improvement, terminations, accommodations, organizational changes, and other high-stakes situations; experience designing or operating compensation bands, leveling, performance reviews, promotion processes, talent reviews, manager training, and workforce planning; excellent judgment under ambiguity; strong analytical fluency; comfortable with tools such as Ashby, Rippling, Gusto, Justworks, Deel, Carta, Pave, Slack, Notion, Google Workspace, modern device-management systems, and AI tools for sourcing, analysis, automation, and documentation; exceptional written and verbal communication; high discretion and unquestioned integrity; high warmth and high standards; strong hospitality and event instincts; low ego, high urgency, and founder-level ownership; willing and excited to work in person in San Francisco and to help build an in-person culture with exceptional energy, trust, and execution; especially valuable: experience in healthcare, regulated technology, AI, clinician recruiting, mixed employee/contractor workforces, immigration, relocation, workplace operations, or rapid office-based scaling. Compensation and benefits include a salary of $170,000$260,000, based on experience; early-stage equity; meaningful ownership in a category-defining company; medical, dental, and vision benefits; support for moving to San Francisco; US visa sponsorship available for exceptional candidates; in-person retreats, company events, meal stipends, AI tooling, and professional-development support; flexible, unlimited vacation policy; flexible work hours; in person in San Francisco; build the team and operating environment behind a company trying to change health care forever; own People and Talent end-to-end, with direct access to the founders and visibility into every part of the company; with exceptional performance and company growth, this role can develop into VP of People and Talent, Head of People, or another executive leadership position. To apply, visit https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/legionhealth/3f5d8943-7668-4546-8373-54b56b951341/application. The hiring process includes a resume + application screen, founder interview, live working session or case study, onsite cross-functional interviews with founders, and professional reference checks. Estimated time-to-hire is 2 weeks, with a start date of ASAP. Hiring manager: Yash Patel, CEO. Legion Health is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees, contractors, and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law. We encourage applicants from all backgrounds to apply. Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, Legion Health will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. Legion Health is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities throughout the application and interview process. Applicants who require an accommodation should inform their recruiting contact.