Head of Talent and Reward in Newtownabbey

About Joulen

Joulen is the software layer for GB energy flexibility, built in Belfast, built to matter globally. Our platform forecasts energy needs and market value, decides the optimal path, and controls assets to deliver it, maximising returns for residential, commercial and grid-scale customers. We are early-stage, ambitious, and intentional about how we build, not just the product, but the company itself. Joulen runs on six operating principles: Customer Centricity, Talent Density, Move with Urgency, Radical Candour, Disagree & Commit, and Owner-Operators, set out in our internal Culture Deck. This is a company that designs its culture as deliberately as it designs its product, and this role exists to make sure the people function lives up to that standard.

The Role

This is Joulen's first dedicated Talent & Reward hire. You will build the function from the ground up, designing how we attract, hire, pay and retain talent dense enough to outperform companies many times our size. You'll report to the COO, work closely with the CEO and leadership team, and have direct influence over the people decisions that determine whether Joulen scales the way we intend it to. You will own two connected disciplines: Talent (how we find, assess and hire owner-operators who raise the bar) and Reward (how we pay top-of-market, and keep compensation honest as we scale). At this stage, you will be hands-on, there is no team yet to delegate to, while also setting the systems, policy and partner relationships that a function will eventually grow around.

Key Responsibilities

• Talent
• Build and run end-to-end hiring for Joulen, from role definition through to offer, applying the Keeper Test to every hire so each one genuinely raises the bar, not just fills a seat.
• Design a hiring process that screens for both capability and cultural fit against the six operating principles, working closely with hiring managers across product, engineering and commercial teams.
• Own the candidate experience and employer brand, including how Joulen's culture and ambition come across to people outside the company.
• Design and continuously improve onboarding, working with the COO and leadership to ensure every new joiner gets full context from week one, including ownership of how new hires are prepared for and integrated with The Joulen Bootcamp.
• Build workforce planning into the company's growth trajectory, advising leadership on org design, hiring sequencing and capacity ahead of need.
• Reward
• Design and own Joulen's compensation philosophy and structure.
• Design and manage the benefits offering, balancing cost discipline with a genuinely competitive package for an early-stage company.
• Run pay review and promotion cycles with rigour and consistency, and ensure decisions are defensible, fair and well documented.
• Keep Joulen's reward practices compliant with UK/NI employment law and good practice as the company scales toward IPO.
• Building the Function
• Establish the policies, systems (ATS, HRIS) and processes a Talent & Reward function needs, choosing tools that fit a fast-moving company of our size today, with room to scale.
• Act as a trusted adviser to the COO and leadership team on people strategy, organisational design and culture, including stewardship of the Culture Deck itself as the company grows.
• Build the business case and, over time, the team; this role is expected to grow into a small Talent & Reward function as headcount scales.

What We're Looking For

• Proven experience owning talent acquisition and/or reward, ideally both, in a high-growth or scale-up environment; you've built something like this before or built significant parts of it.
• Direct experience designing compensation and equity frameworks from scratch, including comfort with share option schemes (e.g. EMI) in a UK context.
• A track record of hiring high-performing teams, not just filling roles, but genuinely raising the bar with every hire.
• Comfortable operating without a playbook: this is a build-it-yourself role in a company that designs its own systems rather than copying templates off the shelf.
• Someone who reads our six operating principles and recognises themselves in them, in particular Talent Density and Radical Candour, since you will be both the architect and the protector of the bar.
• Strong knowledge of UK employment law; Northern Ireland-specific experience is an advantage but not essential.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and speed; you'll be designing process while also running it, often in parallel.

What Joulen Gives You

Joulen's culture is built on a two-way bargain, the Charter. In return for the bar we set, you can expect:

• Context, not control, the full picture and the freedom to act on it.
• Top-of-market pay, and a direct hand in making sure that's true for everyone else too.
• Candour both ways, direct feedback, and leaders who take challenge as well as they give it.
• Air cover for speed; when you execute and it's imperfect, we protect the bias for action.
• Real recovery, flexibility and protected downtime in return for the big pushes.
• A genuine seat at the table: you will help author the people side of a company built to scale from Belfast to a global IPO.

Location & Logistics

Based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, hybrid working, with regular in-person time expected given the foundational, relationship-heavy nature of this role. Full-time, reporting to the COO, with close working relationships across the leadership team.