Senior Director/AVP/VP
Full Job Description
About the Role
At CloudSEK, we believe that performance, culture, and employee happiness are intrinsically linked and form the foundation of our success. We are seeking a dynamic and experienced Chief Happiness Officer (Senior Director/Director/AVP/VP/CHRO) to lead our people operations and foster an environment where our teams can achieve their best work. This role is pivotal in ensuring our employees remain engaged, motivated, focused, and high-performing, while also prioritizing retention and cultivating a lasting, positive company culture.
This is a strategic, systems-driven role focused on culture, performance, and employee well-being, rather than a purely "feel-good" HR function.
Key Responsibilities
1. Measure What Matters
Develop and implement robust systems to continuously track key people metrics, including:
- Employee engagement, morale, burnout, and energy levels
- Manager effectiveness and team health
- Attrition risk, regretted exits, and retention of top performers
- Alignment to company mission, clarity of goals, and execution focus
Transform these metrics into actionable dashboards, signals, and early-warning systems, moving beyond traditional annual surveys.
2. Build Feedback and Improvement Loops
Design and manage comprehensive feedback mechanisms:
- Continuous feedback systems (pulse surveys, 1:1 frameworks, skip-levels)
- Clear escalation and resolution pathways for friction, conflict, and disengagement
- Manager coaching programs to enhance leadership quality across the organization
Proactively identify and address issues to prevent negative impacts on execution.
3. Identify, Grow, and Retain Top Performers
Establish and maintain fair and transparent systems for identifying high performers and high-potential talent.
- Ensure top performers are recognized, rewarded, and developed efficiently.
- Design strategic retention plans for critical talent.
- Collaborate with leadership on promotions, career pathing, and succession planning.
The ultimate goal is to ensure our best people feel valued, challenged, and supported, avoiding burnout and neglect.
4. Design a Scalable Culture
Codify and actively reinforce our cultural values through rituals, storytelling, and behavioral systems.
- Ensure cultural consistency across all geographies, teams, and growth stages.
- Identify and eliminate incentives or behaviors that foster politics, fear, or low-trust environments.
- Build an organization where speed, ownership, integrity, and excellence are the norm.
Shape a culture that defines who we are and how we operate, even when unsupervised.
5. Partner with Leadership on Org Design and People Strategy
Work closely with the CEO and leadership team on organizational health and structure.
- Advise managers on team effectiveness and leadership development.
- Collaborate with HR/People Operations on compensation, performance management, and growth systems.
Bring data-driven insights and strategic perspective to leadership, not just execution.
What Success Looks Like
- High levels of engagement and energy across all teams.
- Low regretted attrition, particularly among top-performing employees.
- Managers who are trusted, effective, and respected by their teams.
- A strong company culture that attracts exceptional talent and deters low-integrity behavior.
- An environment where employees consistently produce great work and are motivated to stay long-term.
Who You Are
- 12+ years of experience in people leadership, culture development, organizational design, or performance management, preferably within a startup or tech environment.
- Possess strong systems thinking capabilities, with the ability to design effective feedback loops, metrics, and processes.
- Exhibit deep empathy coupled with high standards; you genuinely care about people while maintaining a commitment to excellence and addressing mediocrity.
- Comfortable working with data, dashboards, and analytics.
- Confident in influencing senior leaders and holding them accountable.
- Demonstrate high integrity, low ego, and utmost trustworthiness.
- A genuine passion for helping individuals achieve their best work.
Company