Head of People

Berlin

Full-time

Permanent employee

Your mission

Build a company where exceptional people do the best work of their careers, even as we scale.

At Dunia, we are transforming materials innovation to build a utopian future of abundance. That only works if we build an exceptional people organization around it.

As our Head of People, you will work directly with the leadership team to design and scale the human engine behind Dunia. You will shape how we hire, grow, evaluate, and retain top talent in a highly technical, fast-scaling deep tech environment.

Your mandate is simple but high-stakes: ensure that Dunia consistently attracts the best people in their field, helps them do the best work of their careers, and scales without losing speed, rigor, or culture

Your tasks will include:
Build a world-class hiring engine

Design and run scalable technical and non-technical hiring processes
Partner closely with leadership to continuously refine the org and hiring priorities
Define methods tomaintaina high hiring bar without slowing the company down

People as force multipliers

Build onboarding that accelerates productivity, ownership, and context
Design and operate performance/feedback systems that reward impact

Be a true partner to talent

Coach leaders and high-potentials on team design, feedback,and people systems
Provide thought-leadership around culture, incentives, and long-term talent strategy

Own the operational backbone of People

Oversee HR operations including contracts, payroll, benefits, visas, and compliance (with Finance and external partners)
Ensure alignment with German labor law while keeping processes pragmatic and startup-friendly
Anticipate people-related risks before they become bottlenecks

Protect and evolve company culture

Translate values into everyday behaviors, rituals, and decisions
Design offsites and culture initiatives thatactually matter
Build retention strategies focused on top performers and critical talent

Your profile

You are a senior People leader who has already helped scale a company through real growth, complexity, and tradeoffs.
Proven experience building and scaling People functions in fast-growing startups. You have had ownership over hiring, performance, and org design (typically 5+ years, but we care more about scope and impact than titles or timelines)
Knowledge of German labor law, paired with the judgment to apply it pragmatically in a startup environment
Credibility with senior leaders and highly technical talent. You can challenge, coach, and support founders, managers, and ICs with equal clarity
Strong systems thinker who knows when to introduce structure and when to stay out of the way
High bar for talent and performance, combined with fairness in how decisions are made
Comfortable operating in ambiguity, setting direction where no playbook exists yet
Clear communicator who can turn complex people topics into simple, actionable decisions
Fluent in English and German

Most importantly, you believe that

Great companies are built through people,
The bar for high performance should constantly increase, and
Bureaucracy is a failure of imagination, not a necessity of scale.

Über uns

Dunia bedeutet „Welt" in über 20 Sprachen – und spiegelt unseren Anspruch wider, Technologien zu entwickeln, die weltweit Wohlstand schaffen. Durch die Kombination von Physik, KI und Automatisierung beschleunigen wir die Materialentdeckung für Energiesysteme und Industrieanwendungen der nächsten Generation. Unsere Arbeit trägt dazu bei, Energie zugänglicher und Materialien erschwinglicher und widerstandsfähiger zu machen – und verändert, wie Wissenschaft von der Idee zur Wirkung gelangt. Werde Teil unseres Teams und arbeite an Problemen, bei denen Fortschritt sich wirklich verzinst.

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Wir sind bestrebt, ein diverses und inklusives Arbeitsumfeld zu schaffen, in dem sich alle willkommen und sicher fühlen, sie selbst zu sein. Unkonventionelle Karrierewege sind bei uns ausdrücklich willkommen. Wenn du unsere Vision teilst, kannst du sicher sein: Wir wollen, dass du erfolgreich bist. Vielleicht bist du genau die richtige Person für diese oder eine andere Stelle, die noch nicht ausgeschrieben ist.

Melde dich gern und folge uns auf LinkedIn!