Director, Talent Management at GiveDirectly

Travel: Approximately 3-4 trips per year, including at least one to a country of operation and one to a key in-person leadership moment.

About this role

• We are currently planning for a significant increase in scale, and we are building the People function that can carry it.
• This is our first senior talent management role. Today we have pieces of talent management programs and processes in place, but not yet a function. You will build one: an intentional approach to how we onboard, develop, and retain our people. That covers performance management and its link to pay, manager and leadership development, learning, onboarding, talent planning and succession, employee listening and engagement, and culture and values.
• The first year is weighted toward four priorities: joining the redesign of our performance system early, alongside the Head of People, and owning it as it moves into execution, as we move to pay for performance, revamping onboarding ahead of our next wave of hiring, planning our values retreat for senior leaders, and getting a read on employee listening and engagement. As those take shape, the balance shifts toward the longer-term build: the vision and roadmap for the function, a foundational manager program, talent planning and succession, and the team around you.
• The reason for this weight: the performance system and onboarding are our most acute gaps today, but they should not be construed as a ceiling of the job. We are hiring a senior talent management leader who can shape the whole function over several years, not the owner of one or two programs. If your instinct on reading this is that the performance redesign is the whole job, this role probably isn’t the right fit, and the reverse is also true: if you want to set strategy but not build the first versions yourself, year one will frustrate you.

What you’ll do

Build the talent management function

• Within your first 90 days, assess what exists today across these areas, recommend the sequencing for the first year, and agree to it with the Head of People.
• Set the vision and multi-year roadmap for talent management across the areas it covers, and sequence the work against the People roadmap.
• Propose the team around it, and decide what we build in-house and what we buy or borrow.
• Connect talent management to workforce planning, compensation, and recruitment, in partnership with the Head of People, Finance, and function leaders.
• Build an approach to talent and succession planning, starting with critical roles: work with leaders to identify succession gaps, assess potential successors, and put development plans in place to prepare people for future opportunities.

Own the performance system

• Join the performance system redesign early, alongside the Head of People, and own it as it moves into execution: a system that produces reliable, calibrated outputs to inform merit increases, connected to our new salary bands.
• Make the system worth using, not a check-the-box exercise: one that helps managers hold better performance and development conversations and gives employees clarity on expectations, feedback, and growth.
• Build calibration and the data around it so ratings and merit decisions stay consistent and fair across countries, currencies, and manager quality.
• Set a clear global standard for handling low performance that doesn’t default to a misconduct process, and equip managers to use it.
• Ensure the performance system helps managers identify and support sustained high performance, connecting it to recognition, development, and career growth opportunities.
• Iterate the system through multiple cycles, using calibration, outcome data, and feedback from managers and employees to improve it.

Build how people join, learn, and are led

• Revamp onboarding ahead of our next wave of hiring: own the content and experience for new hires and their managers, working with People Ops on process and systems.
• Build a foundational manager program and the tools behind it: feedback, coaching, difficult conversations, and performance management.
• Extend into leadership development and broader learning as the function matures.

Shape culture and listen to employees

• Plan the values retreat with an external facilitator and our executive sponsor, and own what carries into daily work afterward.
• Get a read on listening and engagement today, covering what we hear, where it goes, and what should change, and use it to build our employee listening strategy.

What this role is not

• Not a recruiting role. Hiring sits with our Talent Acquisition team. You partner with them on the handoff into onboarding and on how we assess and develop talent once people are here.
• Not the owner of compensation design. Pay structures and bands are set through our compensation work. You own how performance is assessed and how ratings connect to pay decisions.
• Not an employee relations or casework role. Cases in country belong to managers and HR Managers, supported by the People team. You own the performance system and the manager capability that helps them handle concerns well.
• Not the owner of HR systems or process administration. Onboarding workflows and our HRIS sit with People Ops. You own the content and the experience.

Who we’re looking for

Required

• 7+ years in talent management, performance, or organizational design roles, including time leading a function or a major part of one.
• You have designed a performance system, not only administered one. You can show how ratings connected to pay and what you changed after the first cycle.
• You have kept a rating and pay system fair across contexts with different currencies, labor markets, and manager quality.
• You are a hands-on builder. You have built talent management programs and systems from scratch, or close to it, in a start-up or scale-up: performance, onboarding, manager development, or a whole function, where what you needed did not exist and you built it while the volume was already arriving. We are not looking for steady-state operating experience, or for leaders who have overseen this work without building it themselves.
• You think in systems. You can show how a change in one part of a talent system, such as ratings, calibration, pay, promotion, or onboarding, shows up in the others, and you reason from the underlying problem rather than copying another organization’s template.
• You design with change management in mind from the start. You plan for how managers and employees in different countries and cultures will adopt a new program or system as part of the design, not as a rollout step afterward, and can show how you knew it stuck rather than being worked around.
• You have deep experience in at least two of onboarding, manager development, and employee engagement or listening, and working experience in the third. You have built programs and content people actually used, and can show how you knew they worked.
• A track record of joining a major project already in motion, taking it over, and working through disagreement with a senior partner, and of influencing without formal authority in a matrixed organization.
• Judgment and prioritization. You decide what slips and say so plainly.

Preferred

• Experience in a mission-driven or international organization, ideally alongside high-growth commercial or tech experience.
• Experience working across multiple countries, including sub-Saharan Africa.
• Experience working with external facilitators, consultants, or vendors, and knowing what to hand off and what to hold.
• Comfort using data (survey, performance, calibration) to make decisions, and knowing when the numbers mislead.
• Exposure to compensation design or close work with a total rewards team.
• Professional French or Portuguese.