Head of HR / People

About Deliverance AI

Deliverance AI is the production AI platform company. We exist because 94% of enterprises fail to scale AI — not for lack of ambition or budget, but for lack of platform, governance, and delivery capability. We close the gap between AI investment and AI production for enterprises across regulated industries including pharma and biotech, financial services, retail, telecommunications, and logistics.

Our proprietary nine-layer platform — built around three core capabilities: Clarity (see everything), Govern (control everything), and Accelerate (ship everything) — is deployed inside customer environments with live workloads running on it from day one. We are not a consultancy that writes strategy decks. We are not a staffing firm that lends contractors. We are an engineering-led company with proprietary platform IP, a growing agent marketplace, and 15+ pre-built AI blueprints that cut months off delivery timelines.

Our engagement model is simple: Assess (4 weeks), Deploy (12–16 weeks), Operate (ongoing). Dedicated engineering pods own delivery end-to-end. Every deployment compounds the platform. Every use case ships faster than the last. Governed, observable, and delivering value from day one.

About the role

The Head of HR / People will build and own the entire people function at Deliverance AI. In a company where talent is the primary competitive advantage — our ability to attract, develop, and retain ML engineers, AI architects, data engineers, engagement leads, and commercial talent directly determines whether we can deliver on our mission — this is one of the most important roles in the business.

The AI talent market is fiercely competitive. Every ML engineer and AI architect on the market has multiple offers from well-funded companies. Meanwhile, the delivery professionals who can bridge technical depth with enterprise customer engagement are equally scarce. You will need creative, differentiated approaches to employer branding, recruitment, and retention that position Deliverance AI as the place where people who ship production AI want to build their careers.

Our brand values — engineering rigour, radical transparency, customer obsession, operational discipline, and compounding value — are not just marketing words. They need to be embedded in how we hire, how we develop people, how we manage performance, and how we build culture as we scale.

What you will do

• Build the HR/People function from the ground up — policies, systems, processes, and programmes that support a growing, distributed team.
• Design and implement compensation and benefits frameworks that are competitive in the AI and enterprise technology talent market while sustainable for a growing business.
• Own the employee lifecycle from offer through onboarding, development, performance management, and offboarding — building experiences that reflect our brand values.
• Develop Deliverance AI's employer brand and Employee Value Proposition, positioning the company as a compelling destination for engineers and delivery professionals who want to ship production AI, not write strategy decks.
• Partner with hiring managers and the Recruiter on workforce planning, pod staffing, and hiring priorities aligned to engagement pipeline and business milestones.
• Build performance management and career development frameworks that help people grow while ensuring high standards across engineering pods and commercial teams.
• Ensure full compliance with UK employment law, HMRC requirements, pension auto-enrolment, and relevant regulations.
• Advise the CEO and leadership team on organisational design — particularly the pod model, engineering team structures, and how to scale delivery capacity while maintaining quality.

What we are looking for

• 7+ years of HR/People experience, with at least 2 years in a senior or head-of role at a technology company, ideally in a scaling startup or high-growth environment.
• Demonstrable experience building people functions and processes from early stage — you have done this before and know what to prioritise when resources are limited.
• Strong knowledge of UK employment law, HMRC compliance, and HR best practices.
• Experience designing compensation frameworks, equity/option schemes, and benefits packages that compete for technical talent in the AI and engineering market.
• A strategic and commercial mindset — you understand how people strategy connects to delivery capacity, pod utilisation, and business outcomes.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills — you are someone people trust, confide in, and seek out for advice.
• Experience hiring and supporting technical teams (engineering, AI/ML, data, delivery) is a significant advantage.
• Genuine passion for building inclusive, high-performance cultures where engineering rigour and radical transparency are lived values, not posters on a wall.