Head of People

• Lead and grow Sona's People function, reporting to the Chief of Staff & VP of People, with ownership across business partnering, ops, and strategic People projects. • Act as the go-to partner for managers navigating performance conversations, probation, and difficult people decisions across a 150+ person, globally distributed team. • Drive strategic People projects — including performance management frameworks, L&D, and culture initiatives — from design through to delivery. • Manage the People Ops Manager, shaping the operational side of the function while focusing your own time on strategic thinking and stakeholder partnership. • Build the frameworks and processes that help Sona scale past 150 headcount and into new international markets.

• Be a People generalist comfortable spanning business partnering, ops, and project delivery. • Have worked in a startup or scaleup environment (ideally post-Series A) and be used to building things from scratch rather than running established processes. • Bring a commercial mindset — framing People decisions in terms of what's right for the business and understanding organisational priorities. • Have personally handled performance management, probation, and difficult people situations — not just designed policy around them. • Be self-sufficient — able to manage senior stakeholders, navigate ambiguity, and make judgement calls without constant input. • Communicate clearly and directly, adapting your style across different audiences and seniority levels.

• Have experience scaling a People function through 100–250 headcount. • Have international employment experience. • Have exposure to building performance management or L&D frameworks from scratch.

• Own the People function day to day and act as the People leader across the business. • Partner with managers and leaders on performance management, probation, employee relations, and people decisions. • Drive strategic People projects from design through to delivery. • Work with the People Ops Manager to ensure operational processes are documented, AI-first, and scalable. • Shape the People strategy in close collaboration with the VP of People as Sona scales into new international markets.

Sona is one of the most exciting B2B SaaS companies in the UK right now. The company has raised over $100 million from world-class investors and has grown revenue by 400% in 2023 alone. Two of the three founders, Oli Johnson and Ben Dixon, previously spent six years building Catapult, a gig platform for hospitality and retail, while Steffen Wulff Petersen came from Rocket Internet, where he helped launch Lazada, HelloFresh and Payleven. That domain expertise is a genuine differentiator: Sona is not a generic scheduling tool bolted onto HR. It is built from the ground up for complex, multi-site enterprises with hundreds or thousands of frontline staff. What stands out on Glassdoor (4.6/5 from 26 reviews, 88% recommend, 94% positive business outlook) is how consistently employees praise the team culture, the benefits and the pace of growth. The compensation sub-score is a remarkable 4.9/5. Sona offers genuinely strong benefits for a startup: Bupa health insurance, 25 days holiday plus 10 flexible public holidays (with an extra day per year of service), enhanced parental leave (26 weeks full pay for primary parents, 8 weeks for secondary), share options, pension matching up to 5%, twice-yearly team retreats and a quarterly £200 learning budget. The main things to be aware of: this is a fast-paced startup where priorities shift quickly; some reviews mention long hours and pressure around headcount management; and the team is still relatively small, at around 150 people. But with a fresh $45 million Series B led by N47, US expansion underway, and the recent launch of Forge, an enterprise AI application builder that lets customers create custom software on top of Sona's platform, the company is at a genuinely exciting inflexion point.

• Earn £80,000–£95,000 base salary plus share options. • Work in a hybrid pattern with 2–3 days per week in the London office. • Take 35 days annual leave (25 standard plus 10 flexible public holiday days), plus an extra day per year of service. • Receive pension contributions matched up to 5%. • Access comprehensive health insurance and enhanced parental leave and pay. • Access a salary sacrifice childcare scheme (Workplace Nursery). • Receive annual all-expenses-paid team retreats and a professional development budget.

Sona is the next generation of AI-native frontline workforce management, building an end-to-end platform covering Scheduling, HR, Payroll, and Communications for the world's largest frontline organisations. In under 5 years, Sona has made a deep impact on over 100,000 frontline workers, grown to 140+ team members, and secured over $100M in funding including a Series B led by N47 alongside Felicis, Northzone, and Gradient Ventures.