People Business Partner

About the role

Focused Energy is constructing the future of clean energy through laser-driven inertial fusion, operating with a $240M Series A that represents the largest fully secured Series A in the global fusion industry as the company scales rapidly across multiple geographies in Germany and the United States. The People Business Partner will be embedded at the intersection of business strategy and people decisions, serving as a trusted advisor to technical and operational leaders rather than acting as a policy relay point. This role owns translating workforce challenges into actionable solutions across performance management, organizational design, team effectiveness, and leadership capability development. You will join at a pivotal inflection point where the company is rolling out a company-wide leveling and career framework, launching its first structured performance cycle, and building the infrastructure required to scale from Series A through commercialization. Success in this role requires co-creating playbooks from first principles, navigating ambiguity with sound judgment, and balancing the need for structure with the urgency of a scaling deep-tech company. The hire will directly influence how people data informs decisions and how culture evolves to support a high-performance environment grounded in feedback, accountability, and respect.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Partner directly with senior leaders in Engineering, Physics, and Operations to translate business priorities into people strategy and actionable workforce solutions.
• Serve as a trusted advisor on organizational design, team structure, and leadership capability, avoiding the role of a simple policy relay point.
• Co-own the rollout and ongoing evolution of the performance review process and career framework while driving clarity and alignment.
• Coach managers on setting clear expectations, delivering direct feedback, and conducting conversations that move people forward effectively.
• Navigate complex employee relations situations with sound judgment, balancing empathy with accountability to support a healthy culture.
• Support a culture where giving and receiving feedback is normalized and frequent, rather than treating it as a once-a-year event.
• Facilitate calibration sessions and support restructuring conversations to help leaders manage through the growing pains of scaling.
• Use people data such as attrition trends, engagement signals, and compensation benchmarks to inform recommendations rather than relying on gut feel alone.
• Maintain a strong working knowledge of German labor law, including BetrVG, TzBfG, and AGG, and know when to flag issues, advise internally, or escalate to counsel.
• Bring a diagnostic lens to engagement and retention patterns by connecting operational shifts to people outcomes.
• Operate comfortably in a function that is still being built, holding the tension between the need for structure and the need to move quickly.
• Demonstrate fluency in both German and English as daily working languages to communicate effectively across all levels.
• Partner with technical leaders in science and engineering to earn credibility and ensure people strategies support technical objectives.
• Contribute to standing up or significantly evolving performance management and leveling frameworks as the company scales.

Requirements

• Bring 10+ years of progressive HR or People experience, with at least 5 years in a true business partnering capacity that is not a renamed generalist seat.
• Possess experience in a scaling tech, deep-tech, or engineering-heavy environment where headcount growth has outpaced organizational maturity.
• Demonstrate a strong command of German labor law to ensure compliance and sound decision-making in a multi-jurisdictional context.
• Show the ability to coach leaders through ambiguity around performance, organizational change, and team friction without defaulting to process for process's sake.
• Be comfortable operating in a function that is still being built, balancing the need for structure with the urgency to move and execute.
• Maintain fluency in both German and English as daily working languages to enable clear communication and collaboration.
• Exhibit sound judgment in navigating complex employee relations situations while balancing empathy with accountability.
• Use data-driven thinking to inform recommendations, leveraging people data and benchmarks without needing to be a data scientist.

Nice to have

• You have partnered with technical leaders in engineering, science, and technology environments and have earned credibility within those domains.
• You have been part of standing up or significantly evolving a performance management or leveling framework and can apply those lessons here.
• You have a clear point of view on what great people partnering looks like, grounded in outcomes and impact rather than activity alone.
• You are drawn to mission-driven companies and want your work to connect to a purpose larger than the next quarter.

Practical notes

The role is Hybrid and can be based in Berlin or Darmstadt, Germany. No specific working hours, travel requirements, visa needs, or application deadlines are stated in the source material.