iwoca is looking for a Chief People Officer (CPO) who will be responsible for nurturing a really healthy culture, boosting engagement and raising the performance bar across the company. And through building such brilliance within our teams, our CPO will be helping to accelerate us on our mission and achieve exceptional results for our small business customers.

We’re looking for someone who is passionate about building high performance teams – right now, you’ll probably be “walking the walk” as a business leader whom others admire, you will have worked with several People Ops or HR teams but you may never have worked within that function before. If you are truly passionate and curious about how best to scale exceptional leadership skills (like your own) and build healthy and high-performing team cultures, then this is a brilliant opportunity for you to do so across an entire fast-growing organisation. We can’t wait to have you on board!

Specifically, the CPO will do the following :-

• Manage the overall performance of the CEO’s leadership team – the CPO will work closely with the CEO to ensure that iwoca’s leadership team is strong, engaged and highly effective. This includes things like helping to identify and fill key resource gaps, thinking about performance management strategies for each team and helping to build effective cross-team relationships that enable better communication and collaboration

• Identify opportunities to improve our People strategy and achieve our People goals – you’ll be curious about every area of People Operations and look for ways in which we can become even more efficient and effective at hiring, retention, learning & development, performance management, paying fairly etc. across the company. You’ll inherit an exceptional team of People Partners, Talent Partners and our Office Manager – whom you’ll mentor, develop and work closely with to achieve your People goals

The CPO will work closely with all of the CEO’s direct reports; and will report directly to Christoph (our CEO).

Background / skillset

We’re looking for someone who has the following experience :-

• You have a strong personal track record of building and managing high performing teams and leading a business function – you’ll have led teams at other companies which set a new performance bar for other teams in the organisation, or provided the blueprint that other functions learnt from or copied. Ideally you’ll have experience of managing teams across different locations, and if you’ve ever worked in Germany then that’s a big plus.
• You have experience of working in other high-growth companies – it doesn’t matter which sector(s) you have worked in previously (no experience of Financial Services? That’s fine); what’s more important is that you have worked at different organisations in terms of size, culture, management challenges, etc., and you thoughtfully distil what you have learnt and apply it to achieve great results at iwoca
• You’ve been part of a senior management team – you’re an established leader, coming not only with experience but also with gravitas and strong leadership qualities
• You’ll likely have a strategy or product background – in this role, you’ll need to be analytical and creative in order to develop and implement a strong People strategy; you’ll need to engage with different stakeholders from across the business to understand and solve problems effectively together, and also be comfortable digging into data in order to diagnose and solve issues. It’s likely you have a background in strategy consulting – so that you come equipped with frameworks that help you structure your thinking and communicate your ideas really effectively

We’re looking for someone who is :-

• Super smart, naturally curious, keen to learn new things and explore ideas – if you already have a preset idea of what you think “a great People strategy” is then you’re probably not the right fit for the role. We’re not after a plug-and-play strategy, but we want someone who will really get under iwoca’s skin, understand us and help to build on our strengths and address any weaknesses that will help us become the best team possible
• Obsessed about people and culture – you read blogs and books on this topic (at iwoca, we love Radical Candor – Kim Scott, Thinking Fast and Slow – Kahneman, Messy – Matthew Syed to name just a few!)
• Has lots of gravitas plus empathy – you can really connect with people at every level of the organisation and across every team

Passionate about developing themselves and others – you have a growth mindset and you’re continuously curious yourself. Plus you are willing to invest the time and effort to help others to learn and grow – not only your direct reports, but your peers as well.