Lead People Partner

We’re a global team of over 400 people, working together to push the boundaries of open-source technology and multi-cloud solutions. Our vision is to help developers, builders, and creators bring their ideas to life with speed and simplicity, by providing a cloud data platform that makes open-source databases, search, streaming, and application infrastructure easily accessible to everyone.

The Role

As Lead People Partner, you will collaborate with the CPTO and their leadership team to build talent-dense organisations, plan ahead for the talent they need, and make sure Aiven's people strategy actually shows up in how the function runs.

You're not just implementing what the People team designs. You help shape what it is, then make it land in your function in a way that works. You're also a senior voice on what the People function builds and prioritises across the company.

Leaders treat you as a peer who challenges and supports them, not as someone who runs HR processes on their behalf.

What You'll Do

• Exec advisory: Act as a strategic advisor to your C-suite and VP-level leaders. Shape how they build their organisations, manage and develop their top talent, and retain the people they can't afford to lose.

• People strategy for your functions: Co-create the people strategy for your functions with functional leadership. Understand the business well enough to know what's needed, and push back when the ask isn't the right answer.

• Talent density: Set the standard for how talent density is built and maintained in your functions, through 9-box, career frameworks, stay interviews, and succession planning. Keep an honest, current view of where the organisation is strong, where it's thin, and what needs to change.

• Manager accountability: Drive the shift to managers owning their people outcomes instead of leaning on HR, ensuring managers have the skills, tools, and expectation to handle it themselves.

• Total rewards, levelling, and DEI: Own total rewards alignment and levelling consistency across your functions. Champion diversity at senior leadership level, in how promotions, succession, and hiring decisions get made.

• Workforce planning: Think 6–12 months ahead with your functional leaders on headcount, capability, and team shape. Lead the headcount planning squads with the functional Guilds (TA and FP&A).

• AI-first behaviours: Sponsor AI-native career frameworks in your functions, and drive AI-first behaviours in how your functional leaders and their teams work.

• Collaborate with wider People team: When a people product needs to be built, company-wide or specific to your function, you’ll influence and collaborate with the wider people team, bring the functional insight, frame the problem, and stay involved as the work develops.