Head of People

About the role

You will own the end to end people strategy and execution for Cape, architecting the talent systems and team structure required to scale our national security mission. You will design and deploy a recruiting operation that sources elite technical and commercial talent while reinforcing our privacy first brand. You will own the full employee lifecycle, from offer to retention, ensuring our total rewards and people programs reflect the risk taking, builder oriented culture. You will establish the foundations for a high performance organization, translating company objectives into people programs that scale without losing agility. You will act as a strategic partner to the executive team, embedding yourself in business decisions to align people initiatives with critical priorities. You will lead by example in building trusted relationships across the company, maintaining visibility into team health and sentiment. You will report directly to the founder and CEO, shaping the company level dialogue and influencing long term direction at the highest level.

Key facts

What you'll do

Drive the end to end strategy for recruiting and HR, translating business demand into a scalable talent acquisition and people operations engine.

Build and manage a high performing recruiting team, starting with the hiring of a Head of Recruiting who can own sourcing, sales, and operations.

Design and implement sourcing strategies that reach elite engineers, product managers, and security specialists aligned with Cape's mission.

Elevate business partnerships by working directly with founders and executives to understand priorities and solve complex hiring challenges.

Own the design of compensation, benefits, and performance management programs to improve retention and employee engagement.

Establish rigorous people analytics to track hiring velocity, retention, diversity, and workforce health against ambitious growth targets.

Champion the employee experience, ensuring that programs for onboarding, development, and recognition support our culture of trust and high performance.

Collaborate with cross functional leaders to integrate people initiatives with product, security, and go to market strategies.

Operationalize core HR functions, including policy design, compliance, and systems, while maintaining a high trust, high expectation environment.

Own the planning and execution of org design, clarifying roles, career paths, and succession to support growth from 100 to 300+ people.

Implement structured interview frameworks and calibration processes to improve hiring quality and consistency across teams.

Partner with finance and leadership to model and manage people budget efficiency, optimizing tools and capacity as the company scales.

Define and roll out career frameworks that create clear progression paths and motivate high impact contributions across all functions.

Lead change management efforts to communicate growth milestones, structural shifts, and cultural reinforcement programs.

Requirements

Bring a minimum of 10 years of progressive people experience, with 3 to 5 years in a leadership role that included direct responsibility for recruiting.

Demonstrate a track record of building people processes and teams from early stage in at least one high growth startup environment.

Show mastery of core people functions, including talent acquisition, compensation design, performance management, and day to day HR operations.

Prove experience working cross functionally alongside executive and business unit leaders to drive strategic initiatives.

Exhibit strong judgment and discretion when handling sensitive information related to national security and privacy critical initiatives.

Display comfort operating in ambiguous, fast moving environments while maintaining rigorous execution and follow through.

Commit to building a diverse, inclusive team where different perspectives strengthen our approach to privacy and security.

Align with Cape's values of trust, builder minded execution, and the belief that privacy and national security can be strengthened through strong technology.

Nice to have

Experience in the telecommunications, networking, or infrastructure technology sectors.

Background in serving government, defense, or national security customers.

Prior work on security or privacy oriented products and programs.

Practical notes

This role is based in New York, with travel to our DC office required on a frequent basis.

Employment is full time, and compensation is structured within the $275,000 to $350,000 range.

The selected candidate will join a rapidly scaling team and should be prepared for significant growth responsibility within the first 12 months.

Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship for this position.