People & Culture Lead (HR)

about the role

A lab is only as good as the conditions it makes for thinking. You would own those conditions: how we find people, how we bring them in, how we look after them once they are here, and how we keep the culture honest as it scales past the founding handful.

This is not a process-for-its-own-sake role. It is a craft role — designing the human systems of the studio with the same restraint we bring to everything else.

responsibilities

• Run hiring end to end: write the postings, read every application, design humane and rigorous interview loops.
• Own onboarding so a new person is doing real, owned work — and writing about it — inside their first fortnight.
• Hold compensation bands honestly and keep them legible to everyone in the studio.
• Be the person people can bring a hard conversation to, and handle it with discretion and care.
• Keep the culture written down — the few principles that actually govern how we work.

you may be a good fit if you

• Have built or substantially shaped the people function of a small, high-craft team.
• Write clearly and would rather a short honest note than a long policy document.
• Treat hiring as design work, not pipeline management.
• Are comfortable being the only person doing this for a while, and building the function as you go.

some strong candidates may also

• Have worked inside a studio, lab, or research group rather than a conventional startup.
• Have a point of view on what makes creative people do their best work.

how the lab works

We are small and designer-led. There is no funnel of approvals — the person doing the work owns the decision, and writes down what they learned. We measure ourselves by the odd questions we manage to answer well, not by headcount or velocity.

Work is done in the open inside the studio: every attempt becomes an entry in the index, signed and dated. You will be expected to write — clearly, in plain language — about what you tried and why.

logistics

The studio is the anchor. Remote roles are genuinely remote; hybrid roles expect a few days a quarter in the studio for the work that only happens in a room together. We sponsor visas where we can and will say so plainly if we can't for a given role.

Compensation is a band, not a negotiation theatre — we tell you the band up front and place you in it honestly.

how to apply

Write to [email protected] with the role code in the subject line. Send a CV or portfolio — whatever best shows the work you are proud of — and a few sentences on why animiste, specifically. We read every one. No cover-letter theatre; tell us something true.