Director of HR in New York, New York at Liminal Strategy

Liminal is the market intelligence company for identity, fraud, cyber, and financial crime. We help the world's leading banks, fintechs, and technology vendors make faster, smarter decisions, powered by a decade of the deepest buyer and vendor data in the space. Our business runs across three connected pillars: an advisory practice that works directly with CEOs and executive teams, a market insights arm that produces the category's most trusted benchmarks and indices, and a real-time market intelligence platform that turns our data and insights into a decision-making tool for our clients.

We're a Series A company moving fast, and we're looking for the person who will build the people foundation that lets us move faster.

You'll join at a moment when the people decisions you make will define the company for years. You'll partner with the executive leadership team, with the mandate to evolve a strong HR foundation into what Liminal needs for its next stage. If you want to be the person who helped make a great company's long-term success possible, this is the role for you.

About the role

We need a Director of HR who can operate on two planes at once.

On one plane, this is a deeply operational role: you will own payroll, benefits, PEO management, HRIS, and office operations across multiple geographies. Your operational chops are so strong that employees forget this part of the role exists – but leadership will always recognize this. On the other plane, this is a strategic role. You will sit at the table as a true business partner to senior leadership, and you will treat people planning as a core input into our growth strategy.

That means:

• Knowing how to identify, attract, and close high performers in a competitive market
• Designing performance management practices that actively produce high performance, as opposed to simply measuring performance
• Building a data-driven point of view on where we should grow or hold the line, in direct partnership with our business plans and dynamic strategic planning process
• Building the people infrastructure (comp philosophy, career pathing, onboarding, culture rituals) that lets a small team punch above its weight

You’re not starting from scratch. Liminal has a solid HR foundation in place, built by a founding HR leader. Your job is to get a real finger on the pulse of what's next for the company and evolve that foundation to lead the effort. And because Liminal is three businesses in one, you'll need to be fluent in adapting people practices that flex across very different working styles and geographies, while driving a unified culture underneath.

What you'll do

Operational excellence

• Run payroll, benefits administration, and HRIS across multiple U.S. states and international geographies in partnership with our PEO and EORs
• Manage compliance with U.S. and international employment law, policies, and procedures
• Own the employee handbook and policy documentation, keeping it current as the company adds states and countries
• Maintain compensation benchmarks, pay bands, promotion ladders, annual merit/raise cycles, bonus and incentive structures, and the benefits program.
• Drive core company cadences, including All Hands meetings and offsites

Talent strategy and acquisition

• Partner with hiring managers to build hiring processes that consistently identify and land high performers
• Own the full employee lifecycle: recruiting, onboarding, performance management, development, and offboarding
• Build a compensation philosophy and career framework that is competitive, fair, and built for a Series A trajectory

Culture and performance

• Design and run new hire onboarding and training programs to reduce speed to impact
• Design performance management practices that motivate employees as opposed to basic measurement
• Shape and protect a culture that rewards high performance, ownership, and speed
• Act as a trusted advisor to managers and leadership on team health, org design, and people issues
• Field employee questions, resolving conflicts, and handling sensitive employee relations matters directly
• Manage performance improvement plans and upskilling underperforming talent

Strategic workforce planning

• Build headcount plans in direct partnership with the CEO/COO/CFO, tied to revenue and growth targets across all three business lines
• Bring people metrics (retention, time-to-fill, engagement, comp benchmarking) into board and leadership reporting,
• Build manager enablement/training so people managers can run feedback, career conversations, and 1:1s well, not just individual contributors
• Bring a data-informed point of view on where to invest in people and where to hold back based on dynamic strategic planning
• Serve as a genuine thought partner in company strategy — not just an executor of it

Qualifications

• 6+ years in HR/People leadership, with experience owning both the operational and strategic sides of the function
• Experience building HR from the ground up or scaling it through a high-growth stage (Series A/B or equivalent). You know what needs to exist at this size and what can wait
• A track record of hiring and developing high performers, and of building performance management systems that employees respect
• Comfort operating across multiple geographies and, ideally, international employment considerations
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to champion change management and bring the organization along through periods of rapid growth and evolving people processes
• The judgment to think like an owner, connecting organizational decisions to business outcomes
• Excellent instincts for culture-building in a small, fast-moving, high-caliber team
• A bias toward building simple, durable systems over process for its own sake

Location: New York City or the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area, hybrid. Some travel across geographies expected.