Head Of People

About Us
We are a boutique AI firm, founded in ****, headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, with an AI Lab in Milan, Italy.
Not a consultancy.
Not a software house.
An AI firm, boutique by design, with one focus: financial services.
We co-create AI agents with our clients and run them in production, inside regulated financial institutions.
Today more than 50 of our AI agents are live, and our team has filed 42 AI patents.
We believe in responsible, pragmatic AI: systems that are governed by design, integrate into real workflows, provide measurable value, and remain under the client's control.
Our TeamForward-Deployed Engineers: 24 people, including 4 Ph.
D.
SLeadership: 3 peopleWe are a lean, technical-first team, and we're growing.
We plan to add 10 new Team Members in the next 6 months.
Growth at that pace only works if hiring, onboarding, payroll and the day-to-day running of the company work flawlessly.
That is this role.
The RoleThe Head of People & Operations owns everything that makes Gemmo work as a company, as opposed to what we deliver to clients.
You report directly to the CEO and own each process end to end: from designing it, to running it, to fixing it when something breaks.
There's no handoff chain.
In practice, the role combines three disciplines:People: hiring, onboarding, leave, performance reviews, and the rituals that keep a growing team aligned.
Payroll & Administration: monthly payroll, payslips, salary payments, benefits and purchasing, working with our payroll consultant, accountant and labour-law advisors.
Operations: hardware, the Milan office, some support to Accountancy team (light), travel and offsites.
Nobody arrives strong in all three.
We hire people who are solid in people operations and Italian employment admin, and eager to grow into the rest.
We're a small company, and we value flexibility.
When a task comes up in another area, such as accounting, you'll be expected to get up to speed quickly and help out.
Who You AreYou have at least 2+ years of experience in HR, people operations or an HR generalist role, ideally in a startup or scale-upYou know Italian employment administration well: CCNL contracts, payroll, payslips, leave, internships and convenzioni di stageYou have run hiring end to end, including technical and graduate recruitingYou take ownership of outcomes, not just tasks: payroll and onboarding deadlines don't slip on your watchYou're comfortable managing external partners such as payroll consultants, accountants and labour lawyersYou build processes, document them and improve them, rather than reinventing them every monthYou write clearly and communicate confidently in Italian and English, both written and spoken: our HQ is in Dublin and we work in English with international colleaguesWhat You'll DoYou'll own every process that keeps Gemmo running, from a candidate's first application to their payslip, their laptop and their next performance review.
HiringCreate, publish and manage job announcements in Workable, from spec to offerRun our internship pipelines with ITS and TTS institutes, and publish openings on university career boardsFinalise convenzioni di stage with universities and institutesOnboarding and people managementOnboard every new hire so their contract, laptop, email, accounts and licences are ready on day oneRun the performance review cycle, end to endDeliver our "Get the basics right" course to new joinersSupport our Agile rituals (daily standups, weekly sprints, Friday retrospectives) so they run on time and stay usefulNew onboarding experienceRedesign onboarding end to end, from the signed offer to the end of the first three monthsBuild a first-weeks plan for each role, with a buddy, clear goals and check-ins at 30, 60 and 90 daysCollect feedback from every new joiner and use it to improve the next onboardingLearning programme for the technical teamDesign a yearly learning programme for our Forward-Deployed Engineers, built around the skills our projects needSelect courses and certifications, and manage the training budget and enrolmentsOrganise internal knowledge-sharing sessions, and track participation and progressLeaveManage holiday and permessi requestsMonitor and finalise the company holiday plan, so delivery and leave never collidePayroll and benefitsRun the monthly payroll for our Italian entity with our external payroll consultantCheck and distribute payslips, and prepare salary paymentsPurchase and distribute meal vouchers (Edenred)Purchasing, hardware and facilitiesHandle purchases with company cards for the Milan office, with every receipt reconciledBuy hardware and manage our laptop fleet through our device-management platformManage the Milan office rent and the landlord relationshipTravel and offsitesOrganise travel and accommodation for the teamPlan our offsites, including the annual Dublin offsite at HQAI is how we work here too: you'll use AI tools to automate routine admin and keep our process gu