Hiflylabs

Head of People

Hiflylabs  •  Budapest, HU (Hybrid)  •  9 hours ago
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Job Description

Company Description

We're Hiflylabs, a vibrant team of 250+ data and tech enthusiasts. From artificial intelligence to data engineering, data science, and application development, we work on a wide range of projects around the world.

At Hiflylabs, the core of our culture from the very beginning has been our mentoring system. For us, this is not a formal HR program, but a stable, trust-based, and professional support relationship spanning every colleague’s entire journey at Hifly. Curious about our mindset? Watch our CEO's video about our mentoring system!

As we grow and expand into international markets, we are facing an increasing number of organizational and leadership challenges that go beyond what mentoring alone can address. For this reason, we are establishing a brand-new People organizational unit: rather than building a classic, bureaucratic corporate HR model, we are creating a distributed, supportive structure.

As Head of People, you will have the opportunity to build and shape this new area from the ground up. Working directly with senior leadership, you will be responsible for strategic People directions while preserving and further strengthening everything that makes Hifly human-centered.

Job Description

What you will do:

People Strategy & Organizational Development:

  • Create and build Hifly’s People strategy and governance model.
  • Act as a strategic partner to ensure People perspectives are represented in top-level organizational decisions (growth, change management) right from the planning phase.
  • Shape company culture and lead People Analytics initiatives.
  • Support organizational development steps arising from international expansion (e.g., integrating foreign hubs or remote colleagues, managing cultural diversity).

Leading the People Advisor Team & Supporting the Mentoring System:

  • Lead, develop, and, if necessary, expand the team based on the existing People Advisor team (2 people) — including onboarding, capacity planning, unified operational frameworks, and escalation protocols.
  • Provide professional support and serve as an escalation channel for complex, cross-team matters.
  • Support the continuous evolution of the mentoring framework and Advisor roles.

Leadership & Talent Management:

  • Establish strategic-level leadership development, talent review, and succession planning programs.
  • Own the frameworks for performance management, feedback systems, and Pulse surveys.
  • Consult with mid-level managers on strategic roadblocks.

Career Paths, Compensation & Recruitment:

  • Lead the development/refinement of the grading system, career paths, and annual salary review frameworks.
  • Direct the strategic operations of recruitment and Employer Branding guidelines in close collaboration with Marketing.
  • Professionally oversee labor law and compliance frameworks (e.g., GDPR, EU Pay Transparency preparation).

What this role does NOT include:

  • You will not be the individual mentor: The mentor remains the primary pillar of individual professional and personal support; you build the system and the framework behind it.
  • You will not take over managerial responsibilities: Feedback, performance evaluations, and individual salary decisions remain with managers.
  • You will not collect processes for the sake of it: We aim for distributed, empowering operations, not bureaucracy.
  • You will not run payroll: Operational HR/payroll is handled by Finance; you are responsible for the strategic and professional frameworks.

Qualifications

We are looking for you if you have:

  • Several years of HR, People, or Organizational Development (OD) leadership experience (Bonus: fast-growing tech/IT, IT consultancy, or professional services environment).
  • You are thrilled by the prospect of building a new function from scratch; you don't rely on off-the-shelf templates, but create tailored solutions for Hifly through teamwork.
  • You are comfortable at both strategic and operational levels; you think in systems, aiming to solve real problems rather than building processes for their own sake.
  • You excel at building trust across all levels, enjoy working with leaders in an advisory/coaching role, and comfortably hold up a mirror when the organization hits a bottleneck.
  • You are well-versed in key labor law and compliance frameworks.
  • Fluent, confident command of English, Hungarian is a must

An explicit advantage:

  • Coach, mediator, or facilitator qualifications/experience.
  • Experience in scaling or culture-centric organizational transformations.

Additional Information

What We Offer:

  • The opportunity to build a completely new People domain and function according to your vision.
  • A seat at the strategic decision-making table and direct collaboration with top management.
  • Real authority and empowerment to shape the organization.
  • A human-centered, open, and autonomous company culture.
  • Hybrid work arrangement and flexibility.
Hiflylabs

About Hiflylabs

We are Hifly—a lab of high-flyers turning data and AI into competitive advantage.

What started as a small data mining company in 2015 grew into a team of 250+ experts with offices in Budapest, Vienna, and London. We've delivered 600+ projects across three continents and we're among the FT1000 fastest-growing companies in Europe. Our focus? Putting people first and making them fly. Clients and colleagues alike.

We make data, AI, and digital products work.

Enterprises partner with us to turn data into decisions, AI into ROI, and pilots into production. We serve clients like Accenture, Continental, Bosch, Levi's, T-Mobile, General Electric, DB Schenker, ExxonMobil, Mercedes-Benz, Vodafone, and more. See their success stories: https://hiflylabs.com/case-study

Why partners choose us:

We bring AI and data expertise from before the hype with a vendor-agnostic, hands-on approach. PoC-to-production in weeks, not months. Reusable frameworks for faster scaling. Knowledge transfer in every engagement. As Cirkul's VP put it: our data engineers are "some of the best in the past decade."

What makes us different:

We're one of the few companies globally with 2 Databricks MVPs and a seat on Databricks' Product Advisory Board. As early adopters of Databricks Apps, we bring unique production-proven expertise. Our team holds 100+ certifications and we're a Select Partner for Databricks, AWS, and Snowflake, an Azure Gold Partner (Data & Analytics), and a Google Cloud Certified Partner.

Our expertise: Data science | Agentic AI integration | Automation | Data engineering | Cloud migration | Digital product development through Appic by Hiflylabs

Our people are our strength. We grow through mentoring, knowledge-sharing, and a culture where honest feedback matters.

Visit hiflylabs.com or let's talk: https://hiflylabs.com/contact

Industry
IT & Software
Company Size
201-500 employees
Headquarters
Budapest, HU
Year Founded
2015
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