Head of HR - EMEA in Slough

Location: UK

Working pattern: Hybrid, 2 days per week in the London office

Salary: £100,000 - £120,000

Language requirement: Business-fluent French required

Gravitee is a 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ Leader, on a mission to govern the world’s intelligence. We deliver the industry’s most advanced platform for Any API, Any Event, and Any AI Agent, trusted by global leaders including Michelin, Roche, and Blue Yonder.

The Role

AI is rewriting the rules of business, and Gravitee is at the centre of that transformation. As Head of HR, EMEA, you will play a critical role in shaping the people infrastructure, leadership capability, and employee experience that support Gravitee’s continued growth across the region. This is a senior, high-ownership HR leadership role covering the full EMEA people agenda. You will lead People Operations, employee relations, employment law compliance, performance management, culture, engagement, and manager enablement across a fast-moving, international SaaS environment.

You will also oversee recruitment across EMEA, partnering with internal and external talent teams to ensure hiring is structured, consistent, high-quality, and aligned to business needs. This is not a hands-on recruitment delivery role; the focus is leadership, governance, hiring quality, and manager capability.

The role requires someone who is commercially sharp, operationally strong, comfortable managing complexity, and able to build from scratch in a demanding scale-up environment. You will report into senior leadership and will need the credibility, judgement, and resilience to influence at executive level while remaining close to the detail.

Business-fluent French is essential, as Gravitee has a significant employee population in France and requires someone able to work confidently with French-speaking employees, leaders, and external employment law partners.

What You’ll Be Doing

• People Operations & HR Leadership
  • Own the EMEA People Operations agenda with accountability for employee relations, compliance, performance management, policy, documentation, and core people processes.
  • Act as a trusted HR partner to leaders and managers across the region, balancing commercial pragmatism with fairness, consistency, and sound judgement.
  • Manage complex or sensitive employee matters with calm decision-making, clear documentation, and appropriate legal input where required.
  • Ensure people policies, records, and processes are scalable, audit-ready, and appropriate for a growing international SaaS business.
  • Partner effectively with French employment law specialists and internal stakeholders, using business-fluent French to support clear communication and sound decision-making.
  • Identify risks, gaps, or inefficiencies in current people practices and take ownership of improving them rather than waiting for escalation.
  • Bring a continuous-improvement mindset to HR operations, using data, tooling, automation, and emerging technologies to simplify workflows and improve employee experience.
• Talent & Recruitment Oversight
  • Oversee recruitment across EMEA, ensuring the business hires exceptional talent with pace, structure, and high standards.
  • Partner closely with internal and external recruitment teams, providing direction, governance, and challenge where needed.
  • Support hiring managers to make better decisions through structured interviewing, evidence-based assessment, and inclusive hiring practices.
  • Ensure recruitment processes are scalable, consistent, and aligned with Gravitee’s values and growth expectations.
  • Use data and systems to improve hiring quality, process visibility, and overall talent outcomes.
• Culture, Engagement & Employee Experience
  • Act as a visible, trusted People leader across EMEA, supporting a cohesive and inclusive culture across a distributed workforce.
  • Help translate Gravitee’s values into everyday leadership behaviours, people decisions, and operating practices.
  • Support engagement, wellbeing, communication, and manager-enablement initiatives that can scale with the business.
  • Build strong relationships across a demanding, fast-paced environment, influencing effectively both upwards and across the organisation.

Essential Skills & Experience

• Business-fluent French is essential.
• Strong HR leadership experience across the UK and EMEA.
• Good working knowledge of UK and European employment law, with the ability to partner effectively with external employment law specialists, particularly in France.
• Experience working in high-growth technology, SaaS, scale-up, or deep-tech environments.
• Proven ability to lead People Operations across multiple jurisdictions.
• Experience managing employee relations, performance, compliance, policies, and core HR processes.
• Strong understanding of recruitment governance and hiring quality, with experience overseeing recruitment rather than personally delivering end-to-end recruitment.
• Confidence using data, systems, tools, and automation to improve people processes and decision-making.
• Strong written communication skills and the ability to create clear, scalable documentation.
• Commercial judgement, resilience, and credibility with senior stakeholders.
• Pragmatic, calm, collaborative working style with a strong sense of ownership.

Who Thrives Here

Our growth is powered by people who bring passion to their craft, professionalism to their execution, and a commitment to excellence. You’ll thrive here if you:

• Care deeply about high-quality output and operational clarity.
• Are curious, adaptable, and energised by the fast-moving AI landscape.
• Take full ownership of your work from problem definition through to delivery.
• Are comfortable building from scratch in a fast-paced, evolving environment.
• Can manage ambiguity, challenge constructively, and influence senior stakeholders.
• Value openness, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

Bonus Points

Experience in SaaS, AI-enabled systems, open-source communities, or developer-led technology environments would be advantageous. A strong growth mindset and genuine curiosity about AI, automation, and modern people practices will also be highly valued.

Life at Gravitee

At Gravitee, we invest in humans, not just roles. You’ll get:

• Salary of £100,000 - £120,000 depending on experience and alignment with core competencies.
• Stock options — you build it, you own it.
• 25 days holiday plus UK public holidays.
• 3 mental health days plus wellness allowance.
• Your birthday off.
• Professional development budget to support your growth.
• Hybrid working, with 2 days per week in the London office.
• Quarterly team events and an annual company offsite.
• A meaningful, progressive, global company culture that is as ambitious as it is hardworking.
• Endless growth opportunities in a company operating at the centre of API, event, and AI transformation.

At Gravitee, we believe diverse perspectives make better products and stronger teams. At Gravitee, no employee or applicant will be treated less favourably on the grounds of sex, marital status, race, color, nationality or ethnic or national origin, disability, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, pregnancy or maternity, marital or civil partner status, or religion or belief.