Director, People Operations

About Us

Gradient Sports spun out of Pro Football Focus (PFF) in May of 2024. We’re taking the same dedication to industry-leading player grades, analysis and metrics and applying them to the Beautiful Game - international football, aka soccer. We’re building intuitive, efficient and delightful products for professional clubs, agencies, media, and fans, and we’re just getting started. 

The Role

As Gradient’s first full-time People leader, the Director, People Operations will ensure our unique culture scales alongside the business and that employees consistently feel valued, supported and empowered. Reporting directly to the CEO, you will be a trusted advisor to the senior team, helping shape organizational design, talent strategy and the employee experience across the full lifecycle. This role blends strategic influence and hands-on leadership: you will build and implement systems, programs and processes that matter now, and anticipate what a global, fast-growing team will need next.

What You’ll Do

As Gradient’s first People & Culture hire, you’ll lay the foundation for how our team grows and thrives. A core part of your mandate will be to design and implement Radford leveling and a fair compensation strategy, giving every employee clarity around expectations, equity, and growth. You’ll also build recruiting and onboarding processes that allow us to consistently attract top talent and give new hires an inspiring start.

Beyond hiring, you’ll shape the entire employee lifecycle: performance programs, career development, and offboarding that reflects our values. You’ll be a strategic partner to the CEO and senior team, advising on organizational design, workforce planning, and leadership development as Gradient expands globally. And you’ll be the champion of our culture, creating programs that drive engagement, belonging, and psychological safety, while using data and feedback to identify opportunities and deliver measurable improvements.

What We’re Looking For

• Proven People Leadership: 8–12 years of progressive HR/People Ops experience, including at least 3 years leading at a Director or equivalent level in an early-stage/ high-growth, global environment.
• Global HR Competency: Because Gradient already operates across multiple countries, you bring practical experience navigating HR, employment, and compliance frameworks in at least some of our key geographies (e.g., UK, EU, India). You have strong intuition for how HR matters differ across global markets and how to build people programs that work across cultures and legal environments.
• Comfort with 0-1, early-stage environments: You are not phased by starting programs, establishing processes, and assessing what’s needed in an early-stage company environment. You’re able to effectively prioritize and not get overwhelmed by managing multiple high impact projects. 
• Recruiting Expertise: Experience designing and implementing recruiting processes and systems that scale, with a track record of attracting and retaining top talent.
• Compensation & Leveling Experience: Familiarity with Radford benchmarks and the ability to implement equitable leveling and rewards frameworks.
• Strategic Builder: Comfortable with ambiguity, skilled at creating structure where none exists, and able to balance hands-on execution with long-term planning using data and analytics.
• Culture & Influence: Passion for inclusion, belonging, and psychological safety, paired with strong communication and influencing skills that earn trust with executives and employees alike.

Bonus Points

• Scaling & Expansion expertise: Proven ability to grow the people function in an early stage company. Also experience with expanding companies into new locations is a plus.
• Passion for sport and competition: An appreciation for how team dynamics and culture drive performance - on the pitch and in the workplace.

Why Join Us?

Gradient is redefining how football is understood and experienced, and as our first People & Culture hire, you’ll shape how our business scales with that ambition. This is a chance to build the foundation of a global, early-stage company and make Gradient a place where the best talent thrives.

Gradient Sports is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.

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