Head of People - EST

About Maze

Maze is a Series B-funded startup building the future of product research for modern teams. We're backed by some of the world's best funds and are a fully remote team working across 35+ countries.

Maze is the user research platform that empowers any company to build the right products faster, by making user insights available at the speed of product development.

We believe that companies that win are incorporating user insights at every stage of product development, where the organization is empowered to conduct research no matter what their maturity, and that Research can focus on high-value questions with the greatest impact.

Built for ease of use, Maze allows researchers, designers, and product managers to collect and share user insights when needed most, putting them at the center of every decision.

With Maze, companies can recruit the right participants effortlessly, conduct research autonomously, and analyze user insights that drive actual decisions.

About the Role:

Please note that this role is open exclusively to candidates based in the Eastern Time Zone within the United States. Due to the nature of our work and collaboration requirements, applications from other locations will not be considered. We appreciate your understanding and interest!

Maze is seeking an experienced, strategic Head of People to lead the People function and drive the roadmap. This role reports into the CEO and is a member of our executive team. You’ll be leading a team of 2 to start, balancing between strategy and execution. You’ll oversee everything under the People umbrella, from recruitment, HR Operations, DEI and L&D. This role requires strategic thinking, excellent relationship building and influencing skills, and a strong project manager who owns initiatives from inception to launch. 

What You'll Do:

• Lead and scale the People team. Develop and execute the People team’s strategic roadmap, setting and tracking goals while planning the team’s future direction and initiating the change process to achieve it. Manage a team of two (a Recruiter and a People Operations Manager), providing both an inspiring vision and clear definition of roles and responsibilities to ensure alignment and success.

• Serve as the voice of the People team in e-team meetings, ensuring input and buy-in for new people initiatives. Present and analyze key people metrics, keeping the e-team informed and aligned on progress and priorities.

• Lead the recruitment team: streamline processes for pipeline tracking, headcount planning, and establishing a clear source of truth in collaboration with your stakeholders. Ensure effective cross-functional collaboration and maintain visibility across all recruitment activities to meet hiring targets and ensure roles get filled by their designated hire dates.

• Partner closely with people managers, coaching them through challenges and educating them on best practices and people programs. Enable managers to become effective leaders and coaches for their teams, fostering a culture of performance and growth. 

• Oversee, review, and continuously improve People tools, programs, and processes, including performance reviews, engagement surveys, development plans, succession planning, and organizational design. Develop and implement people metrics with a consistent reporting cadence to drive data-informed decision-making.

• Drive initiatives that foster a diverse, inclusive, and equitable workplace, ensuring that DEI principles are embedded in all People team programs. Promote a culture where all employees feel valued and empowered to contribute their best.

• Cultivate a connected remote work environment by promoting a culture of collaboration, communication, and performance across distributed teams. Implement strategies that support team effectiveness, maintain productivity, and ensure all team members feel connected, valued and aligned with company goals.

What You'll Need:

• Proven experience leading People Operations in a scaling startup: A track record of scaling organizations from 100 to 500 employees in a fully remote environment. Adept at scaling all areas of the People team and aligning people initiatives with business objectives while partnering closely with executives. 

• Exceptional relationship-building, collaboration, and influencing skills: Ability to build strong relationships and collaborate effectively across teams and levels. You excel at influencing senior stakeholders and driving alignment on key initiatives, creating a culture of trust and open communication.

• Proven change management expertise: Demonstrated success in leading and managing organizational change by implementing new processes and cultural shifts to enhance clarity, performance, and alignment. Skilled at guiding teams through transitions and ensuring smooth adoption of programs and workflows to achieve long-term success.

• Extensive experience working with global teams across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, with a deep understanding of cultural dynamics and how to foster collaboration in a fully remote environment. Expertise in navigating international compliance and employment laws, ensuring consistent alignment of policies and processes with legal requirements.

• DEI expertise: Strong background in driving Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives, embedding DEI principles across recruitment, talent development, and people functions, fostering a fair and inclusive work environment.

• Data-driven mindset: Experience optimizing people programs by using metrics and KPIs to measure and enhance effectiveness. Skilled in data analysis to inform decision-making and continuously improve processes like performance reviews, engagement surveys, and organizational design, ensuring efficiency and alignment with company objectives.

• Comfort with both strategic and hands-on work: Able to seamlessly toggle between high-level strategic planning and hands-on execution to drive results.

Inclusivity and Pay

At Maze, we are dedicated to building an equitable, inclusive, and authentic workspace. Unique and diverse perspectives are welcomed, and continuous growth is encouraged. We believe that people are more than their resumes, so if your past experience looks different than the criteria listed, we'd still love to hear from you. We appreciate and celebrate non-traditional life routes and encourage you to apply should you connect with a job description or the Maze culture. 

Maze values transparency and it enables us to approach compensation equitably across the world. We are informed by data and regularly check our salary ranges (either United States or Rest of World) against other venture backed companies. Additionally, we are proud of our holistic and generous benefits offerings, included in every compensation package.

We typically target the low - mid point of the salary range to allow room for growth within the role. Your salary is dependent upon many factors, including years of experience, expertise, etc. During your first interview, you can expect to have an open conversation with your recruiter regarding your compensation expectations.

Why Maze is unique

• Early-stage startup: You will join an early-stage startup with less than 150 team members. This means you'll have the unique opportunity to directly impact success and help shape the future of Maze.

• Market disruption: We believe that the way companies build products is fundamentally broken and the user research market is ripe for disruption. For too long, companies have been forced to choose between rapid development without user insights or investing months into research before bringing products to market. But there's finally a groundswell building around a path forward that eliminates this compromise - and Maze is leading the charge.

• Product-market Fit: Maze is used by 100,000+ brands across 4,000 companies, from SMB to enterprises, and in the last fiscal year, we saw 6.5M questions answered, supporting 25K decisions

Benefits

• Health insurance with international coverage, vision, and dental: 100% of the team member premium paid

  • For some locations, coverage options vary, please see our benefits pages for more information

• Free access to proper mental health care, unlimited virtual therapy sessions (with a human) and 24/7 access to resources

• Life and Disability Insurance, 100% of the team member premium paid

• Flexible time off

• Meaningful equity

• Company retreats, fully paid for by Maze

• New MacBook (laptop), paid for by Maze

• Paid Family leave: 16 weeks for birth or adoptive parents

• $500/month to be used for dependent health insurance coverage

  • If you don't have dependents to add to your plan, you will still get access to this money to be used at your discretion to get the benefits that matter to you with our flexible a-maze-ing benefits - gym memberships, co-working spaces, food, travel, whatever!

• $1,500 remote work setup fund to ensure you can set up a productive work space

• Flexible work schedule where you manage your own working hours

• Monthly Bonus.ly points that are awarded to others to recognize teamwork, dedication and helpfulness - points can be cashed out for gift cards and more

• Virtual social engagements randomly throughout the year

• SWAG, we have some really cool swag

• Open, transparent culture that includes virtual: coffee chats, bi-weekly all-hands meetings, and more

Check out all of our a-maze-ing benefits here. 

Outreach Notice

We understand you might be excited about the job you’re applying for, we are excited you are interested! However, please refrain from reaching out to our current team members on LinkedIn for referrals. Our policy is that referrals can only be provided by team members who personally know the candidate. With the high volume of interest in our roles, contacting our team members who are not involved in recruitment can be overwhelming. Additionally, please avoid submitting support tickets regarding your application, as our support team is not involved in the hiring process. Rest assured, our recruitment team is diligently reviewing all applications and will reach out directly if there is a match.