Fractional People and Culture Partner

About us Mastered has been on a mission to help professionals transform themselves through work since 2014, supporting more than 8,000 creatives, makers and leaders along the way. People development isn’t a support function for us, it is the work. Our programmes are built on coaching, reflection and human-first design, and we hold ourselves to the same standard internally. That commitment has helped us build a genuinely strong culture, reflected in a team NPS of 78 and recognition as a Best Place to Work by GamesIndustry.biz two years running.

This role exists because we don’t want to scale without consideration. We’re looking for a People and Culture Partner who is excited by the challenge of taking something that already works - our culture, ways of working and coaching ethos - and helping us make it durable, explicit and scalable, without losing what makes it human. This isn’t about installing “best practice” or fixing problems - it’s about turning our approach to people into a long-term advantage as we grow.

Your mission is to help us all grow - well. You will steward our culture while shaping the People systems and leadership practices that enable Mastered to scale sustainably as a values-led, remote-first business - and be a place where people do some of the best work of their lives. This is a senior, director-level People role, designed for someone who has already led or advised People strategy at a similar stage of growth.

The role is fractional by design, not because the work is small, but because the value comes from strategic leadership, sponsorship and enablement, rather than day-to-day ownership of delivery.

What you’ll be doing:

• You will work as a senior partner to the founders and leadership team, with autonomy to design, influence and embed People systems that enable Mastered to scale sustainably.
• You’ll advise and challenge at a strategic level, then support leaders to own and live those systems day to day.
• You will drive three areas:

• Culture and experience: Help shape the day-to-day experience of working at Mastered - our behaviours, values, ways of working, wellbeing, inclusion, communication, and team rituals.
• Growth and development: Design systems that help people do their best work – performance management, career progression, leadership development, and learning opportunities.
• Functional foundations and People operations: Iterate and build the structures and processes that enable Mastered to function, things like organisational design, roles and responsibilities, compensation and benefits, data and insights, talent acquisition, onboarding/offboarding.

Specifically, in the next 12 months you will have created with us:

• Clear, shared expectations of leadership and management across the business
• A long-term L+D strategy and career progression framework that supports performance, growth and wellbeing
• A competitive and values-aligned People Deal
• Strong people capability within our team of leads
• A scalable approach to supporting freelancers alongside employees
• People metrics and a HRIS system that is fit for purpose

What you’ll need:

• Proven experience in strategic HR/people leadership in remote-first organisations and evolving environments.
• Experience in running or directly advising fast-paced, rapidly growing small businesses.
• Expertise in organisational design, learning and development and benefits design - with a demonstrable focus on being user-first and data driven.
• Strong understanding of freelance workforce dynamics.
• Comfortable working in a fractional capacity, with an understanding that this role will need to ebb and flow as the business changes.

This role is not a fit if you’re looking for a full-time, operational HR leadership role with established systems.

What you’ll get:

• An initial 12-month contract, averaging 4 days per month, with scope to flex up during key phases.
• Compensation between £500-800 a day based on experience.
• Massive flexibility as a fully-remote company: work days and hours that suit you and your colleagues.
• To work with female founders who genuinely believe people strategy is business strategy.
• A role with significant opportunity for impact - to shape how a values-led, remote-first organisation grows sustainably.
• Freedom to design, influence and coach, rather than firefight.
• To hire a people assistant immediately to support day-to-day tasks.

This boils down to work with meaning and a purpose that matters, a team you will love to work with and learn from, and the freedom and responsibility to tackle great problems in a way that aligns with your strengths.