Head of People
External
Emergence Software · USPrepare for this interview
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About the role
Emergence is a thematic holding company backed by the Pritzker Organization focused exclusively on acquiring and scaling category-defining software businesses. We invest in focused portfolios, specialized operating groups with deep domain expertise and proven playbooks. Emergence combines operational rigor with a growth equity mindset, driving sustainable ARR growth, profitability improvements, and industry-leading customer outcomes. The Mission Build a scalable People function that enables rapid acquisition, integration, and scaling of portfolio companies from 25 to 300+ employees.
Responsibilities
- Design and deploy a People Operating System (HRIS, ATS, performance management) across new acquisitions within 90 days of close.
- Establish repeatable talent acquisition playbooks for technical, GTM, and operational roles that reduce time-to-hire by 30%+ and improve quality-of-hire.
- Build end-to-end performance management frameworks including goal-setting, calibration, promotion criteria, and career pathing for distributed portfolio teams.
- Create manager training programs on hiring, onboarding, feedback, and performance conversations for portfolio company leadership post-acquisition.
- Develop people analytics capability to track retention, time-to-hire, engagement, and headcount planning across portfolio with monthly insights to leadership.
- Design and launch DEI program strategy that portfolio companies can customize and implement with measurable quarterly outcomes.
Requirements
- Built and owned the People function as the most senior People leader (not as member of larger HR team) reporting to CEO or CFO.
- Led full-cycle talent acquisition across engineering, product, sales, customer success, and operations at a SaaS company.
- Implemented at least one HRIS, ATS, or performance management system from scratch and drove adoption across your organization.
- Designed, built, and facilitated manager training programs on hiring, goal-setting, feedback, and performance calibration yourself.
- Owned performance management end-to-end including goal-setting frameworks, calibration processes, promotion criteria, and career pathing.
- Built and ran a DEI program from launch with measurable outcomes and business unit adoption.
- Managed the transition from foundational to structured People Ops at a scaling company where you implemented policies, processes, tools, and programs from scratch.
- Demonstrated people analytics capability through engagement surveys, retention cohort analysis, headcount planning, or hiring pipeline metrics.
- SaaS company experience is required. Excludes enterprise HR, staffing, or consulting-only backgrounds.
- PE portfolio or multi-company People leadership experience managing talent functions across 2+ business units or companies.
- Experience scaling organizations across multiple geographies or time zones.
- Background in high-velocity hiring environments such as Series A-C SaaS companies with 50%+ annual headcount growth.
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