Startup Jobs in Sunnyvale, CA

Head, HR (Contract to Hire)

Santa Clara, CA

About the role

We are seeking a Head of Human Resources to help scale and strengthen Gatik's people operations during a critical stage of company growth. This is a high-ownership, hands-on leadership role within a fast-paced autonomous vehicle startup environment. The ideal candidate will be comfortable operating both strategically and tactically building scalable people processes while also rolling up their sleeves to support day-to-day HR operations when needed.

This role will partner closely with founders and leadership teams across engineering, operations, autonomy, robotics, AI/ML, and business functions to help drive organizational effectiveness, employee engagement, performance management, compliance, and culture. We are looking for someone practical, adaptable, solutions-oriented, and comfortable navigating ambiguity in a rapidly evolving environment.

The ideal candidate has strong startup or scaling-company experience, excellent judgment and executive presence, and a proven ability to build HR infrastructure without slowing down the business.

This role will be onsite 5 days a week at our Santa Clara, CA headquarters.

What you'll do

• Partner closely with founders and leadership teams to help scale the organization and build strong people operations practices.
• Lead and support day-to-day HR operations, employee relations, organizational development, and people strategy initiatives.
• Build and improve scalable HR processes, policies, and programs while maintaining startup agility and speed.
• Support performance management processes, calibration discussions, manager coaching, and employee development initiatives.
• Partner with leadership teams on organizational planning, team structure, leveling, and compensation discussions.
• Handle employee relations matters, investigations, and conflict resolution with sound judgment and professionalism.
• Ensure compliance with California employment laws, HR best practices, and internal policies.
• Help improve onboarding programs, manager enablement initiatives, and employee experience processes.
• Support leadership teams during periods of rapid organizational growth, shifting priorities, and evolving business needs.
• Drive strong communication, accountability, and operational excellence across HR programs and initiatives.
• Partner cross-functionally with recruiting, operations, finance, legal, and leadership teams as the organization scales.
• Help foster and reinforce a high-performance, low-ego, ownership-driven culture.

What we're looking for

• 8+ years of progressive HR leadership experience, preferably within high-growth startup or scaling technology environments.
• Strong experience supporting technical organizations such as engineering, robotics, autonomy, AI/ML, hardware, or operations teams.
• Proven ability to operate both strategically and tactically in fast-moving, ambiguous environments.
• Strong knowledge of California employment law, compliance practices, investigations, and employee relations.
• Experience building or improving scalable people operations processes and programs.
• Excellent communication, executive presence, interpersonal, and leadership skills.
• Demonstrated ability to partner effectively with founders, executives, and cross-functional leadership teams.
• Comfortable working onsite and operating in a highly collaborative environment.
• Strong problem-solving skills, sound judgment, and ability to navigate sensitive situations professionally.
• Experience with performance reviews, compensation calibration, leveling frameworks, onboarding, and manager enablement programs is highly preferred.
• Startup mentality with strong ownership, urgency, adaptability, and willingness to roll up sleeves.
• Candidates with demonstrated impact and longevity in startup or scaling environments are strongly preferred over candidates coming solely from highly structured large-company environments.
• Prior experience helping scale organizations through periods of rapid growth is a plus.

Salary Range: $180,000 $260,000

More about Gatik

Founded in 2017 by experts in autonomous vehicle technology, Gatik has rapidly expanded its presence to Mountain View, Dallas-Fort Worth, Arkansas, and Toronto. As the first and only company to achieve fully driverless middle-mile commercial deliveries, Gatik holds a unique and defensible position in the AV industry, with a clear trajectory toward sustainable growth and profitability.

We have delivered complete, proprietary AV technology - an integration of software and hardware - to enable earlier successes for our clients in constrained Level 4 autonomy. By choosing the middle mile with defined point-to-point delivery, we have simplified some of the more complex AV challenges, enabling us to achieve full autonomy ahead of competitors. Given extensive knowledge of Gatik's well-defined, fixed route ODDs and hybrid architecture, we are able to hyper-optimize our models with exponentially less data, establish gate-keeping mechanisms to maintain explainability, and ensure continued safety of the system for unmanned operations.

Visit us at Gatik for more company information and Careers at Gatik for more open roles.