🧑‍🚀 Head of People

Location: proudly onsite, in person, in Old Street, London

At Hoxton Farms, we're cultivating a new kind of fat. As we scale up production and prepare for international expansion, we know that our greatest ingredient for success is our team. We care deeply about the people who work here: how they grow, how they work together and how we create a deliciously fatty future.

We're looking for a Head of People to do just that. This is a defining role at a defining time. Reporting to the CEO, you’ll lead the charge on shaping our People strategy and strengthening the culture that makes Hoxton Farms what it is.

Running our People function, you'll set long-term strategy and manage day-to-day execution, collaborating with company leadership to shape our people systems, champion our culture and enable every team member to thrive.

• Set our People strategy – Own the big picture: from org design and growth planning to performance and progression.

• Build a culture of high performance – Design systems that foster clarity, feedback, autonomy and excellence, with plenty of space to learn along the way.

• Be a partner to leaders – Support our managers and leadership team as a trusted advisor on all things people, performance, and culture.

• Shape how we hire – Evolve our recruitment approach to find exceptional people who believe in what we’re building and reflect our values.

• Level up performance – Create and run simple, meaningful performance and feedback cycles that help people thrive.

• Craft a world-class employee experience – From onboarding to offboarding, make every moment of the journey thoughtful and human.

• Use data to drive change – Turn people insights into action, helping us learn and improve continuously.

• You’ve spent 7+ years in People, HR, or similar roles, with at least 2 years leading a team in a fast-moving startup.

• You know what great looks like and how to build it, combining strategic thinking with roll-up-your-sleeves execution.

• You’re emotionally intelligent, a brilliant listener, unafraid of tough conversations.

• You think in systems and understand how structures, incentives, and habits shape culture.

• You’re steady through change and bring clarity where there’s ambiguity.

• You’re excited about building something new and doing it with care.

• Help shape the future of a mission-driven company (and an entire industry).

• Work with a curious, kind and brilliant team who care deeply about what we do.

• Join a culture that values deep thinking, ownership and being proudly different.

• Leading a People/HR team within a startup or scaleup

• Working in a People/HR team within a scaleup (>100 people)

• Building lean people systems from scratch or scaling them as a company grows

• Recruitment, onboarding and offboarding

• Building and implementing learning and development programmes

• Managing staffing budgets and planning headcount, compensation and staffing costs

• Managing payroll

• Solid understanding of UK employment law, compliance and HR best practices

• Supporting the development of strong people managers

• Line management and delegation

• Acting as a thought partner to the company leadership team

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills

• The ability to switch between strategic thinking and hands-on implementation

• Also nice to have:

  • Progression planning and compensation benchmarking

  • Working with recruitment firms

  • Biotech or a related technical industry

📈 Stock option plan

🏛️ Beautiful office and lab space near Old Street

🏡 Pension plan (matching up to 5% + salary sacrifice)

🏖️ 25 days' holiday + bank holidays

🚑 Private health insurance

🍽️ Lots of tasty food

Hoxton Farms grow cultivated pork fat, a healthy and delicious ingredient for the food industry. Cofounded in 2020 by Max Jamilly and Ed Steele, we are building the world's most scalable and cost-effective tech stack for mammalian cell biomanufacturing – and we’re monetising it with a premium B2B ingredient. Hoxton Farms are a team of 50 based in London. We have raised from investors including Founders Fund, Collab Fund, FSV/F-Prime and Global Brain.

• Healthy fats. B2B cultivated fat is fast to market and will dominate a premium niche. Compared to traditional fat, cultivated pork fat is healthier and more scalable. Hoxton Farms have commercial traction with meat/CPG companies including some of the largest food companies in Asia.

• Cost and scale. Hoxton Farms have patented scalable, low-cost, high-yield bioreactors for mammalian stem cells. We opened a pilot production facility in London in 2023.

• Team. Hoxton Farms have a brilliant and friendly team including world-class talent from the cultivated meat, biotech and engineering industries – all under one roof in central London.

Hoxton Farms is an equal opportunity employer committed to providing a working environment that embraces inclusion, diversity and belonging.

If you believe you would add value to our company but don’t meet all the criteria, we would still love to hear from you. We especially encourage applications from female+, LGBTQIA+, disabled and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) candidates, as these groups are underrepresented in the tech industry.