Fractional Opportunity · CXOwork
People Strategy & Talent
Fractional CHRO / People Leader
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About this opportunity
We're matching Fractional CHROs and People Leaders with companies that have hit the inflection point where informal people management breaks. Between 20 and 100 employees, companies face the same crises: key attrition, pay equity gaps, inconsistent performance feedback, and no documented culture. These problems don't fix themselves.
You will walk in and build the people infrastructure the company should have started building 30 employees ago. Comp bands, performance reviews, recruiting pipelines, onboarding programmes, and the cultural rituals that make good people stay.
Core responsibilities
- Audit current people infrastructure — surface compensation equity gaps, compliance risks, and attrition root causes within 30 days
- Design and implement a complete performance management framework: review cycles, calibration sessions, and promotion criteria
- Build compensation bands, equity refresh schedules, and a total rewards philosophy benchmarked to market data (Radford, Levels.fyi, or Carta)
- Lead executive and senior individual contributor hiring — designing job specs, interview scorecards, and offer negotiation strategies
- Create a structured onboarding programme that reduces time-to-productivity from 90 days to 30 days
- Establish culture rituals: all-hands cadence, values reinforcement, manager training, and recognition programmes
- Design and launch annual and pulse engagement surveys — synthesise insights into an action plan
- Ensure compliance across all active employment jurisdictions — federal, state, and international
- Build the people team from scratch — first HRBP, recruiter, or People Ops hire
Required qualifications
- 8+ years in People/HR leadership, with at least 3 years as CHRO, VP People, or Head of People
- Track record of scaling a people function from 20–30 to 100+ employees
- Strong working knowledge of US employment law — federal and multi-state compliance
- Experience with compensation benchmarking tools (Radford, Levels.fyi, Carta, or Pave)
- Proven ability to reduce unwanted attrition through a combination of culture, comp, and development programs
- Excellent executive communication and coaching skills — regularly advising CEOs on people strategy
Nice to have
Not required — but will strengthen your match quality.
- SHRM-SCP, PHR, or equivalent certification
- Experience with international hiring and multi-jurisdiction compliance (UK, Canada, EU)
- Background in Employer of Record (EOR) implementation (Deel, Remote.com, Rippling)
- Prior fractional CHRO or People leadership advisory experience
Compensation & benefits
- Remote-first engagements — async-friendly with monthly on-site presence for culture work
- Access to CXOwork's CHRO peer network, comp benchmarking datasets, and shared policy templates
- Flexible contract terms — typically 4–8 months, often extending through the first in-house People hire
- Option to recruit your own successor as part of the engagement close process
Application process
- 01Application with one people transformation case study: attrition problem, interventions, and outcome
- 0245-minute panel — compensation philosophy, performance design, and culture-building approach
- 03Profile approved and matched to active companies
- 04Founder intro call — people gap and team health assessment
- 05Kick-off within 2 weeks
Roles included
- CHROs
- Head of People
- Head of Talent
- Recruiters
Key skills