Executive Director, Global People Operations

Your work will change lives. Including your own. 

The Impact You’ll Make

As the Executive Director of Global People Operations, you will ensure our people processes, infrastructure, and programs align with Recursion’s ambitious mission, unique operating environment and rapid growth. Your focus on operational excellence and employee experience will not only make our current workforce happier and more productive, but will enable insights and experimentation to help accelerate progress towards Recursion’s technical and scientific goals.

As a leader in our People Team, you will manage all people operations globally, driving initiatives that enhance the employee experience and ensure operational excellence across our offices throughout the US, Canada and the UK. You will manage and mentor a distributed team of specialists and analysts. This role is for you if you love systemizing the employee experience without losing the human touch, you get a kick out of process improvement, you like to bring order to ambiguity, and you enjoy the full scope of backend to employee-facing efforts in an international environment - and an extra bonus if payroll-wrangling is a compelling intellectual challenge!

In this role you will: 

• Oversee people operations globally, including payroll, benefits administration, employee records, immigration, and compliance with company policies and legal requirements
• Develop, mentor, and lead the People Operations global team, fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, and accountability
• Drive process improvements to enhance service delivery, operational excellence, and compliance with internal and external regulations and processes
• Curate and implement policies and procedures that align with business needs, labor laws, and company culture
• Evolve the use of people systems, AI and automation to enhance the employee experience and provide real time analytics
• Partner with other People Teams (PBPs, TA, Benefits, Reward), Finance, and Legal to align operations with organizational objectives and long-term goals
• Serve as a trusted advisor on operations and employee experience, promoting continuous improvement and best practices

The Team You Will Join:

The People Team is the foundation of our company’s workforce, creating the conditions to enable and sustain high performing teams, and helping employees do the best work of their careers. We are talent scouts and partners, creating experiences and outcomes that support our employees and drive business success. We focus on scalable solutions that add value across geographies, while providing individual advisory partnership and support where it matters most. With a people + data approach, we ensure Recursion has the people, culture and operating dynamics to accelerate drug discovery and get medicines to patients faster.

The Experience You’ll Need: 

• 7+ years of relevant experience in People Operations in tech enabled industries
• 7+ years in People Operations in tech-enabled industries
• Minimum of 5 years managing, leading and developing high-performing teams within HR operations or a related function
• Successful scoping, developing and delivering people projects in a fast-paced, multi-country environment(s)
• Direct oversight in all areas of people operations, including payroll, compliance, benefits, LOA, immigration, and employee relations
• HR tech systems implementation, and interest using AI, automation and tech ecosystems to improve the employee experience (HiBob and ADP a bonus!)
• Knowledge of North American and UK operating environments, and an appreciation for cultural norms and legal frameworks
• In-depth understanding of employment law and compliance best practices
• Strong analytical abilities, using data-driven insights to inform decisions
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to influence and collaborate at all levels of the organization

Working Location & Compensation:

This is an office-based, hybrid position at our US headquarters located in Salt Lake City, UT. Employees are expected to work in the office at least 50% of the time. 

At Recursion, we believe that every employee should be compensated fairly. Based on the skill and level of experience required for this role, the estimated current annual base range for this role is $212,000 to $258,000 (USD). You will also be eligible for an annual bonus and equity compensation, as well as a comprehensive benefits package. 

#LI-LM1

The Values We Hope You Share:

• We act boldly with integrity. We are unconstrained in our thinking, take calculated risks, and push boundaries, but never at the expense of ethics, science, or trust. 
• We care deeply and engage directly. Caring means holding a deep sense of responsibility and respect - showing up, speaking honestly, and taking action.
• We learn actively and adapt rapidly. Progress comes from doing. We experiment, test, and refine, embracing iteration over perfection.
• We move with urgency because patients are waiting. Speed isn’t about rushing but about moving the needle every day.
• We take ownership and accountability. Through ownership and accountability, we enable trust and autonomy—leaders take accountability for decisive action, and teams own outcomes together. 
• We are One Recursion. True cross-functional collaboration is about trust, clarity, humility, and impact. Through sharing, we can be greater than the sum of our individual capabilities.

Our values underpin the employee experience at Recursion. They are the character and personality of the company demonstrated through how we communicate, support one another, spend our time, make decisions, and celebrate collectively.

More About Recursion 

Recursion is a clinical stage TechBio company leading the space by decoding biology to industrialize drug discovery. Enabling its mission is the Recursion OS, a platform built across diverse technologies that continuously expands one of the world’s largest proprietary biological and chemical datasets. Recursion leverages sophisticated machine-learning algorithms to distill from its dataset a collection of trillions of searchable relationships across biology and chemistry unconstrained by human bias. By commanding massive experimental scale — up to millions of wet lab experiments weekly — and massive computational scale — owning and operating one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, Recursion is uniting technology, biology and chemistry to advance the future of medicine.

Recursion is headquartered in Salt Lake City, where it is a founding member of BioHive, the Utah life sciences industry collective. Recursion also has offices in London, Toronto, Montreal and the San Francisco Bay Area. Learn more at www.Recursion.com, or connect on X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn.

Recursion is an Equal Opportunity Employer that values diversity and inclusion.  All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected under applicable federal, state, local, or provincial human rights legislation. 

Recursion welcomes and encourages applications from people with disabilities. Accommodations are available on request for candidates taking part in all aspects of the selection process.

Recruitment & Staffing Agencies: Recursion Pharmaceuticals and its affiliate companies do not accept resumes from any source other than candidates. The submission of resumes by recruitment or staffing agencies to Recursion or its employees is strictly prohibited unless contacted directly by Recursion’s internal Talent Acquisition team. Any resume submitted by an agency in the absence of a signed agreement will automatically become the property of Recursion, and Recursion will not owe any referral or other fees. Our team will communicate directly with candidates who are not represented by an agent or intermediary unless otherwise agreed to prior to interviewing for the job.