Interim head of people

Hybrid role with three days a week in our London or Edinburgh, with travel between offices (including Bath) on a regular basis.

This role is a maternity cover on a 12-month FTC, ideally to start in May 2026.

Seccl is the Octopus-owned embedded investment platform that’s on a mission to helping more people to invest – and invest well.

We’re B-Corp certified with an amazing product-market fit, impressive early traction and the potential to transform an outdated industry, for the better. We've been growing fast and will scale even faster over the next few years.

We’re also proud to be part of Octopus, the £multi billion group that's on a mission to breathe new life into broken industries, through companies like Octopus Energy, Octopus Investments and Octopus Money.

Check out the Seccl website for the latest on our products and our mission to shape the future of investments.

We’re looking for an Interim head of people to join our People team, reporting directly to the CEO and working closely with our executive team. This is a pivotal maternity cover role with full accountability for the people function at an exciting moment in our growth and change - including our transition from Core to Enhanced SMCR, potential European expansion, the evolution of our hybrid and location strategy, and the increasing impact of AI on how we work.

Our People team plays a critical role in enabling Seccl’s growth ambitions - shaping culture, building leadership capability, and ensuring our people foundations are strong, scalable and compliant. As technology and AI continue to reshape the fintech world, you’ll help the business and our people adapt thoughtfully and responsibly – ensuring we build the skills, governance and ways of working needed for the future.

You’ll lead a capable team across partnering, development, operations and talent acquisition, balancing strategic direction with hands-on delivery. With major governance, expansion, organisational and technological priorities ahead, this is an opportunity to influence at the highest level and leave a lasting impact on how Seccl scales – strengthening our readiness not just for regulatory change but for the future of work itself.

• Partnering with the CEO and exec team to ensure people strategy is fully aligned to business goals and growth plans

• Holding senior leaders to account for embedding our culture and role-modelling our operating principles

• Leading organisational readiness for Enhanced SMCR, strengthening governance, accountability frameworks and regulatory learning

• Shaping organisational design and workforce plans to ensure we have the right skills, structure and succession in place

• Preparing the business for European expansion, including hiring, policy localisation and operational setup

• Driving the evolution of our hybrid and location strategy, including office moves, future footprint planning and health & safety oversight

• Supporting responsible AI adoption across the business, ensuring our approach enhances productivity and innovation while maintaining fairness, compliance and strong ways of working.

• Overseeing performance and engagement frameworks, ensuring insight from feedback and survey data translates into clear action

• Acting as an escalation point for complex people relations and regulatory matters, ensuring fair, consistent and compliant outcomes

• Leading and enabling the People team, setting priorities, running quarterly planning and ensuring operational excellence across the full people lifecycle

• Partnering with Finance on reward strategy, salary reviews, executive incentives and long-term workforce cost planning

• You’ve led a people function in a scaling, commercially driven and regulated environment

• You have direct experience of SMCR and ideally Enhanced firm governance requirements

• You’re confident operating at exec and Board level, able to influence and hold senior leaders to account

• You bring strong organisational design and workforce planning capability

• You have deep knowledge of UK employment law and regulatory people risk (European experience desirable)

• You balance strategic clarity with operational pragmatism and are comfortable rolling up your sleeves

• You’re calm in ambiguity and energised by growth, change and evolving complexity

• You lead through others, building trust quickly while combining empathy with accountability

• You rely on a lot of top-down direction. Here, you’ll have a lot of freedom and ownership of your role, and you’ll be expected to shape your own progression

• You’re not comfortable working in a fast-paced environment. Our speed and scalability are what set us apart; you need to be able to act quickly and think on your feet

• You struggle to follow through on ideas. We value people who do what they say they will. If you care about something, you have the freedom here to make it happen

• You don’t like change. You’ll get on great here if you relish the ambiguity of rapid growth and are willing to embrace uncertainty

We offer a generous mix of benefits for the things that really matter to our people, including:

💰 A salary between £100,000 and £120,000 – dependant on experience

🌴27 days holiday + bank holidays (some can be flexible) + day off on your birthday + three days (full time) per year for Dependant leave

💙 Two volunteering days per year

✅ 6% employer pension contribution, and life assurance

🏥 Private medical insurance with AXA Health

🌎 Option to work abroad for up to six weeks a year

🌻 Health and wellbeing initiatives including free therapy via Wellness Cloud, mental health support via Headspace

🌱 Financial wellbeing initiatives including access to will writing offering via Octopus Legacy

🎁 Perkbox – Flexi-points giving you a range of discounts and perks including free weekly coffee, gym and retail discounts.

We're proud to put people first, creating a culture where we truly listen to what matters most to them. Our transparent and inclusive environment encourages diversity of thought, challenge and experimentation.

Check out our Glassdoor page for the latest reviews or our LinkedIn for company updates and insights from the team.

Interviewing is a two-way thing, and we want you to have the time and opportunity to get to know us, as much as we are getting to know you. Our interviews are conversational, so come with questions and be curious. In general, you can expect the interview process to look a bit like this, (following an initial chat with one of our People team):

• First stage – 30 mins competencies-based interview with the hiring manager and Head of people

• Second stage – one-hour technical interview or assessment

• Final stage – 45 mins bar-raiser culture-based interview

⏳ We’ll only close this role once we have enough applications for the next stage. Please submit your application as soon as possible to make sure you don’t miss out and you should expect to hear back from us within one to two weeks of applying.

🌈 Our aim is to build a diverse and inclusive company of awesome people, with unique skills, passions and experiences. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to age, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, family or parental status, national origin, or veteran, neurodiversity or disability status.

If this sounds like your kind of thing, we encourage you to apply even if you don’t tick every box. We’d love to hear from you!