Senior People & Culture lead

You want to help protect western values You want to protect people and critical infrastructure ultimately saving the lives of thousands.

You want to work at the frontier of highperformance autonomous systems.

Join us at CDDS to build CDDS into an elite organization capable of solving some of the hardest technical and operational challenges. You will build further the systems processes and culture that allow extraordinary people to do their best work.

We move at an extreme tempo and priorities are within EU and US. You should be comfortable operating in ambiguity making decisions with imperfect information and continuously evolving how we recruit onboard and develop talent as the company grows.

Tasks

• Partnering directly with the CEO and leadership team on organizational design and hiring strategy

• Building and scaling world-class recruiting processes for engineering robotics autonomy operations and commercial functions

• Identifying and personally engaging exceptional candidates across US and Europe

• Designing interview systems that consistently raise the talent bar

• Creating onboarding experiences that enable new hires to become highly productive quickly

• Developing performance management feedback and career development frameworks

• Building leadership capabilities across the organisation

• Shaping and protecting company culture during periods of rapid growth

• Designing compensation retention and talent development strategies

• Supporting managers in hiring team building performance and organisational challenges

• Establishing people operations that scale without creating unnecessary bureaucracy

• Helping the company navigate rapid growth while maintaining speed accountability and excellence

Your Profile

• 5 years of experience in talent acquisition people leadership organisational development executive search or related fields

• Proven track record of hiring exceptional talent in high-performance environments

• Strong ability to assess talent potential and cultural fit

• Experience partnering closely with founders executives or senior leadership teams

• Excellent communication and relationship-building skills

• High ownership and willingness to operate hands-on

• Strong judgment and ability to make decisions independently

• Comfortable working in a fast-moving startup environment where priorities evolve rapidly

Nice to have

• Experience scaling technical organisations from early-stage to growth-stage

• Background in recruiting for software robotics AI autonomy aerospace or defence sectors

• Experience building people systems and organisational processes from scratch

• Executive search or headhunting experience

• Knowledge of compensation design and performance management

• Experience hiring internationally

• Understanding of startup scaling challenges and organisational design

Why CDDS

• Direct impact on a mission-critical technology shaping US and Europes security landscape

• Opportunity to work directly with the CEO and leadership team

• High ownership and influence on the future of the company

• Build and shape an organisation in hyper growth phase

• Work with highly ambitious technical and mission-driven people

• Fast-moving environment with significant personal growth opportunities

• Attractive compensation

Details

Location: Hardbrucke (Zürich) onsite

Start date: ASAP

Environment: Highimpact deeptech startup working on real deployments