People Lead

London Office

Full time

Hybrid

HR

• £110K – £140K • Offers Equity

Tessl is a fast-growing Series A startup based in London, founded by Guy Podjarny. We’ve raised over $100M from world-class investors including Index Ventures, Accel, GV, and Boldstart, and in 2025 we were ranked #2 in Sifted EU’s B2B SaaS Rising 100 and #20 in Sifted's AI 100.

At Tessl, we are building the context layer for AI coding agents, and a platform for AI-native software development. As an early member of the team, you’ll help shape how we build, scale and support a company operating at the edge of AI and software development.

We’re hiring our first dedicated HR specialist: a hands-on People Lead who can own the operational foundations of the people function while also acting as a trusted partner to managers and leaders.

This is not a traditional HRBP role inside an established people team. It is broader, more hands-on and more foundational. You’ll own the core people operations that keep the company running smoothly, while also supporting managers on performance, compensation, employee relations and team effectiveness.

You’ll report to our General Counsel & Head of Operations and manage our Employee Experience team member. Over time, there may be scope to take on broader responsibility across talent, people strategy and organisational development as Tessl grows.

We’re looking for someone who is excited by the full range: from making sure payroll, benefits and HR systems are accurate, through to advising managers on sensitive people matters and helping us build a high-trust, high-performance culture.

People Operations & HR Infrastructure

• Own the core employee lifecycle, including onboarding, offboarding, payroll coordination, benefits administration, right-to-work checks and employee records.

• Maintain accurate, reliable people data across systems including Deel, Ashby, Notion and Slack.

• Work closely with Finance and external vendors to ensure payroll, benefits and employee changes are processed correctly and on time.

• Own and improve HR processes, policies and standard operating procedures, ensuring they are clear, compliant and scalable.

• Manage visa and immigration processes, working with external counsel where needed.

• Ensure Tessl remains compliant across UK employment matters, with working knowledge of US employment considerations.

• Identify opportunities to use AI and automation to make people operations faster, smarter and more scalable.

People Partnering & Manager Support

• Act as a trusted first point of contact for managers across the business, particularly within Engineering, Product and R&D.

• Support managers with compensation benchmarking, performance conversations, team changes and employee issues.

• Help managers build the fundamentals of good people management, including feedback, team cadence, performance management and difficult conversations.

• Handle employee relations matters with discretion, judgement and empathy, escalating where appropriate.

• Partner with the General Counsel & Head of Operations on more complex or legally sensitive people matters.

Performance, Compensation & Development

• Support performance review cycles, compensation calibration and benchmarking.

• Help build practical frameworks for feedback, progression and career development.

• Bring structure and consistency to people decisions while keeping processes lightweight and appropriate for Tessl’s stage.

• Use data and insight to spot trends, inform decisions and support leadership discussions.

Culture & Employee Experience

• Help Tessl maintain a strong, high-trust culture as the company grows.

• Work closely with the Employee Experience team member to ensure employees have a smooth, thoughtful experience across the employee lifecycle.

• Be a visible, approachable and trusted presence for employees.

• Help reinforce Tessl’s operating principles, including AI-native ways of working.

Talent Interface

• Work closely with the Talent team and hiring managers to ensure hiring, onboarding and people processes connect smoothly.

• Support hiring quality, interviewer readiness and candidate-to-employee transition.

• Over time, there may be scope to take on broader oversight of Talent, depending on business needs and your strengths.

Experience

• Strong generalist HR / People experience in a high-growth technology company.

• Experience operating in a lean People team, ideally in a VC-backed startup or scale-up environment.

• Strong hands-on people operations experience, including payroll coordination, benefits, HRIS, onboarding, offboarding and compliance.

• Experience supporting managers with performance, employee relations, compensation and team effectiveness.

• Comfortable working with technical teams, ideally Engineering, Product, R&D or developer-focused environments.

• Working knowledge of UK employment matters; exposure to US employment practices would be helpful.

• Experience with tools such as Deel, Ashby, Notion and Slack, or similar systems.

Mindset

You will likely thrive at Tessl if you are:

• Operationally strong: you care about accuracy, detail and reliability. You know that getting the basics right matters.

• Commercial and pragmatic: you understand stage, pace and trade-offs. You do not over-engineer.

• Credible with managers: you can build trust, give sound advice and handle sensitive issues calmly.

• Comfortable with ambiguity: you can operate where there is not always a perfect process or obvious answer.

• Low ego and hands-on: you are happy doing the operational work yourself while also helping build for scale.

• AI-curious: you actively use AI tools in your work and are excited by how they can improve people operations.

• Resilient and calm: you can operate in a fast-moving, high-pressure environment and provide stability to others.

• Growth-oriented: you want to learn, stretch and build breadth as the company scales.

We offer a competitive salary, employee share options and benefits benchmarked against the market.

Benefits include:

• 25 days holiday

• Health insurance, including dental and vision, extending to partners and dependents

• Company-matched pension

• Commuting stipend for those living outside London

• Cycle to work scheme

• Regular team lunches, drinks and social events

• Generous office catering

Our office is a new 10,000 sq. ft space in King’s Cross, at the centre of London’s AI ecosystem. We work together in the office on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.

We care deeply about the warm, inclusive environment we’re building at Tessl and we value diversity – we welcome applications from those typically underrepresented in tech. If you like the sound of this role but are not totally sure whether you’re the right person, do apply anyway!

• On Tessl, The AI Native Development Startup

• Announcing skills on Tessl: the package manager for agent skills

• Podcast Episode: The End of Fragmented Agent Context, Guy Podjarny Tessl CEO

Compensation Range: £110K - £140K