Job description
🏆 The Opportunity 🏆
We are looking for a commercially minded Senior People Leader to build and lead a high-impact People function at a fast-growing, ambitious company. You will join a massively international team, with 110 Cargonauts of 40 nationalities working across 23 countries in a fully remote set up.
You’ll lead the people and talent team (currently 2 people) and work shoulder-to-shoulder with the leadership team to build and operationalise a people-first playbook that fuels our high-performance culture and drives real business outcomes. This role goes far beyond HR processes. You’ll dive in to build and launch initiatives that elevate every stage of the employee journey, and continuously iterate to keep our teams equipped, engaged, and empowered as we grow.
This is a unique, entrepreneurial opportunity to be driving the digitalization of air freight and logistics in a fast-growing Series B company backed by leading Venture Capital firms including Index and Bessemer.
We foster a positive, dynamic, hard-working and feedback-heavy culture, with a strong dose of playfulness. Our eSAT is a remarkable +51 , reflecting the strength of our culture. Join us now and transform the way airlines sell cargo!
🌍 This is a fully remote role so you can work from a permanent location (almost) anywhere within 2 hours of CET. See which countries we can employ in currently by checking out this list here.
We also offer flexible workspace options: if you’re based in Berlin, you’re welcome to join other Cargonauts at our office near Moritzplatz. In other cities, we provide coworking space access through Desana. While we’re fully remote, we regularly bring the whole company together for offsites, where everyone meets in person to connect, collaborate, and tackle big challenges as a team.
🎬 A snapshot of what you will be doing here:
Translate business goals into a performance-focused people strategy: Collaborate with founders and department heads to design organizational structures, talent priorities, and processes that attract high performers and empower them to excel in our fast-paced environment.
Partner on strategic talent planning and organisational design: Collaborate closely with our Senior Talent Partner and team leaders to align on future talent needs, assess skill gaps across the organisation, and prioritise hiring plans. Your role will focus on ensuring our organisational structure, capabilities, and operating rhythms are designed to support scalable, high-performing teams while enabling the Talent team to continue delivering excellence in execution.
Own the end-to-end employee journey: From high-impact onboarding experiences that set new hires up for success, to ongoing performance frameworks, entrepreneurial career paths, and compensation models, ensuring every stage drives peak performance and alignment with our values and North Star goals.
Maximize People team impact through automation and innovation: Leverage AI, tech stack optimizations, and process automation (HRIS, ATS, analytics) to amplify our lean team’s reach - enabling us to do more with existing resources while maintaining high standards.
Design for scalable impact, not just headcount: Build thoughtful structures and workflows that remove blockers, streamline collaboration, and enable every team to achieve more.
Be the central hub for all people-related challenges: Act as the trusted advisor for leadership and individual contributors alike - navigating complex employee relations, performance conversations, and strategic pivots with clarity and decisiveness.
Drive data-informed performance improvements: Define, track, and interpret key metrics (e.g., turnover risk indicators, time-to-impact for new hires, engagement signals) to continuously refine programs and ensure we’re enabling top-tier performance.
Partner across functions to unblock impact: Work closely with Finance, Legal and external partners to align Total Rewards, policies, and org designs with budget realities and regulatory demands - ensuring rapid decision-making without bureaucracy.
🕵 We are looking for individuals who have:
10+ years of People/HR experience, preferably more - including at least 4 years in a scaling startup or high-growth environment (preferably post-Series A/B and either, B2B SaaS or Marketplace), have worked in a fully remote or globally distributed set up, in an environment with headcount in the range of 200 - 2000 FTE.
Proven leadership of a People function: You’ve built, significantly reorganised or significantly scaled People teams at least twice, balancing strategic vision with hands-on execution in a lean setting.
Deep commercial acumen: You understand P&L dynamics, organisational strategy, and seek to understand our business model to best translate business objectives into robust people strategies that unlock performance.
Exceptional communication & EQ: You’re a strong writer and speaker, comfortable influencing stakeholders at every level and fostering trust across diverse teams.
Analytical and strategic mindset: You leverage data to diagnose challenges, propose solutions, and measure outcomes without shying away from diving into spreadsheets or HRIS dashboards (or building them) yourself.
Operator/builder mentality: You relish ambiguity, enjoy crafting processes from first principles, and aren’t afraid to own both high-level strategy and detailed execution.
High standards and growth mindset: You push yourself (and others) to continuously improve, experiment with new ideas, and stay curious about best practices in people and culture.
Strong sense of ownership and resilience: You can thrive under autonomy, adapt quickly to change, and make confident decisions even when all information isn’t yet known.
You are willing to learn and open to accepting feedback, generously giving your own in return.
💫 Nice to haves:
Knowledge of the German legal system plus one other jurisdiction
German language is a plus
❤️ We think you will love working here if:
You believe that building a stellar team is as important as building a stellar product.
You’re excited to think and act like a founder in the People space, continually iterating on how we hire, develop, and retain top talent - embodying our leitmotif to “Take ownership. Move beyond the ordinary. Exceed expectations.”
You thrive when given high autonomy and can navigate rapid change without losing sight of long-term objectives. We regularly publish strategy papers and expect Cargonauts to plan and execute their work to meet the North Star goals - which is why “I know how my work supports the goals of cargo.one” consistently ranks as our top survey response.
You hold yourself (and everyone around you) to high standards and are always looking for creative ways to make work better, faster and stronger.
When faced with the choice, you’d rather opt for the ambitious to ensure you grow, than take the easy option - 82% of Cargonauts scored 8⁄10 or higher when asked if they believe their role enables them to learn and develop new skills.
You see the value of giving and receiving feedback and incorporate this into everything you do. This isn’t just talk - our engagement surveys consistently rank “My manager cares about my opinions” and “My co-workers are open to opinions different from their own” among our highest scores.
You are not afraid to voice your opinions and like using data to back them up. One of our most cherished leitmotifs is “Show backbone. Reject bullshit,” and you’ll see this lived out in our daily work.
🤔 What is so exciting about working in the air cargo industry?
Imagine trying to book a holiday without Skyscanner or Kayak—that’s exactly the challenge facing the air cargo industry today. Despite being a $182bn global market, air cargo is still dominated by manual, time-consuming processes. We’re changing that. Backed by leading international investors, we’re building the tech platform that brings transparency and instant booking to airlines and freight forwarders worldwide.
You’ll join a truly international team, working with partners and customers across the globe, and help drive the digital transformation of one of the last major industries yet to modernize. If you want to have a real impact at the forefront of change, we’d love to hear from you.
Curious to know more?
Read more abou t connecting the world’s air cargo markets to make them more productive and successful.
Get to know Siena, Alex, and Bogna from the cargo.one team and find out more about daily challenges, most significant achievements and personal motivations.
View cargo.one latest news and some of our newest cargonauts from the industry.
Click here to view a video from one of our offsites.
