People & Culture Lead ( Orchestrator)

Job Title:  People & Culture Lead ( Orchestrator)

Team:  People Team

Contract: Indefinite

Level: Alchemist  

Please refer to our Capability Framework  

Salary:  Competitive for Not-for-profit organisation  

Start Date: ASAP 

Location: UK, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Slovenia, Austria, Poland, Spain

ABOUT US  

Climate KIC (Knowledge and Innovation Community) is Europe’s foremost climate innovation initiative. We understand that global temperature rise is exceeding 1.5C and this demands unprecedented change. It requires new social dynamics, ways of doing business, capital flows, policymaking, economic models, and new ways of living. That is why our mission is to leverage the power of systems innovation to transform whole places, industries and value chains by 2030, working across sectors to develop and scale ambitious programmes. Climate KIC’s strategy 2024-2030, Transformation, with Urgency, is available here.    

Climate KIC operates as a not-for-profit foundation working through public-private partnership, wielding both public and private funding. Established in 2010 and headquartered in Amsterdam, we orchestrate a community of more than 150 organisations including large corporations and SMEs, municipal and regional governments, universities and research institutes, as well as non-governmental organisations and civil society actors.     

Climate KIC leads the implementation of the European Union’s Mission on Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities and the launch pilot of the Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change, both with the objective of catalysing rapid and deep transformation on a large scale, creating the precedent and economic transition conditions for demonstration, learning, capacity building, fast followership and investment. Achieving the EU Cities Mission will mean avoided scope 1 and 2 emissions alone of an estimated 0.7GT CO2e between now and 2040.    

 Climate KIC has a Remote-First approach, where colleagues work remotely from home based in one of the countries where we have a branch or employing entity (and can work out of local offices or co-working seats, where they exist). We meet at our local offices to exchange and connect and use online collaboration tools to work with each other and with our community. On occasion, we meet in person as teams, and once per year as an organisation.    

 As a mission-driven organisation dedicated to climate transformation, we consider the climate impact of our own actions, for example travel, catering, or IT equipment.    

ABOUT THE ROLE

We’re seeking a truly exceptional and progressive People & Culture Orchestrator for this incredibly rare opportunity. You will be a fundamental part of Climate KIC’s leadership team, shaping the next phase of our organisational evolution as we transition into our “Next Season” - an impact-first, portfolio-led model for scaled systems change. 

You will help create an enviable company identity and culture across our 200+ distributed team, where a learning culture, adaptability, and trust are the foundation of impact. 

The role is incredibly varied. On any given day, you might be coaching leaders, facilitating a workshop, helping craft remote-first work strategies, developing and executing plans to evolve our culture and build new capabilities, introducing a new pay philosophy, defining Team of Teams ways of working, making sure everyone gets paid, or a whole host of other People & Culture things. 

You’ll bring a balance of operational excellence, cultural depth, and transformation acumen - able to zoom between policy detail and systemic change with ease.  

As a People & Culture Orchestrator, you will lead a small People team and establish your position as a trusted business partner to:  

• Design and deliver an adaptive People Strategy aligned with our Next Season transformation: identifying, developing, and mobilising capability in the most sustainable and human-centred way possible. 

• Drive a high-performance culture that is purpose-led, grounded in psychological safety and continuous learning. 

• Develop Climate KIC’s EVP into one of the most compelling in the world, particularly for people motivated by purpose, collaboration, and impact. 

• Optimise people practices under our Remote-First and Distributed Team strategy, ensuring we continue to attract, develop, and mobilise world-class talent across multiple jurisdictions. 

• Evolve our organisational architecture: from job families, to growth frameworks to ways of organising work: enabling adaptive team formation, marketplace-driven work allocation, and new modes of collaboration across organisational boundaries 

• Develop and guide leadership capability to emphasise collaboration, systemic thinking, and adaptive leadership - areas many organisations overlook but that define Climate KIC’s edge. 

• Engage with analytics and AI-enabled insight tools to support data-led decisions and design experiments that test and learn what works across our People systems. 

• Evolve our culture using progressive initiatives that increase autonomy, freedom, and responsibility under our Team of Teams model as we continue to evolve. 

• Champion colleague experience and engagement, ensuring that every touchpoint - from onboarding to exit - reflects our values and commitment to growth, inclusion, and wellbeing 

• Model and embed ‘People orchestration’ as a practice: connecting teams, data, and decision-flows to strengthen coherence across a complex, evolving ecosystem. 

• Oversee the operational flow, roll up your sleeves to be hands-on across a small, agile People team. 

Who you are: 

• A seasoned People generalist who has led across the full colleague lifecycle and is comfortable operating in system transition environments, where structures, roles, and capabilities are evolving. 

• Equally confident in strategic design and operational delivery: someone who can both craft the blueprint and get into the details of payroll oversight or process flow. 

• Digitally fluent and curious about how technology and AI can amplify the human experience rather than replace it. 

• Passionate about culture, learning, and transformation, with the empathy and systems perspective to enable change through people. 

• Comfortable working in ambiguity, influencing without control, and co-creating in a distributed leadership environment. 

• You thrive where the path isn’t predefined - bringing first-principles thinking, curiosity, and imagination to shape what doesn’t yet exist 

Requirements 

To excel in this role, you will bring a blend of strategic breadth, operational depth and cultural intelligence - someone who can anchor People systems in a complex, mission-driven organisation while guiding teams through transition. 

Experience & Professional Background 

• Senior experience across HR / People / OD, ideally with exposure to consulting or dynamic, scaling organisations. 

• Experience working in transformation contexts, where operating models, leadership capability and culture were evolving simultaneously. 

• Demonstrated ability to coach, mentor and influence leaders and teams across diverse personalities and power dynamics. 

• Familiarity with remote-first, international workforce models and multi-jurisdictional People practices. 

• Proven ability to lead People initiatives that integrate culture, organisation design, leadership development and people systems. 

Capabilities & Ways of Working 

• Comfortable with variety and context-switching - moving between strategic design, hands-on delivery, facilitation and analysis. 

• A progressive thinker with a strong grasp of modern People & Culture practice, including design thinking and human-centred approaches. 

• Skilled at identifying and developing talent, with the ability to plan for future capability needs. 

• Strategic, commercially aware, and driven to create measurable outcomes that strengthen organisational health. 

• Demonstrated “zoomability”: able to see the whole system and dive into detail when needed. 

Mindset & Attributes 

• Self-aware, reflective and emotionally intelligent, with strong adaptability and resilience. 

• A hands-on strategist who leads with both head and heart 

• A systems thinker able to navigate complexity, challenge assumptions and shape new possibilities. 

• A clear, confident communicator who builds trust in distributed and diverse environments 

• Autonomous and pragmatic: comfortable making decisions, solving problems and operating in ambiguity. 

• Entrepreneurial and curious, energised by fluid structures, experimentation and co-creation. 

• Known for making things happen and modelling ownership and follow-through. 

What we offer:  

• A deeply purpose-led organisation where your work contributes directly to climate action and systemic transformation 

• A learning-rich environment with continuous opportunities to grow your skills, practice, and leadership 

• Recharge Break: the whole company closes down in the last week of the year so that everyone can truly switch off.  

• 5 Additional Days for Personal Development: we are passionate about continuous learning. 

At Climate KIC, we are wholeheartedly committed to building a diverse and representative team and an inclusive workplace that values different life experiences and perspectives, and we encourage personal development, learning and growth.   
When recruiting, we look to achieve diversity in the candidate pool. We actively encourage applications from underrepresented groups and are happy to consider reasonable adjustments that will foster success in potential colleagues from diverse backgrounds and life situations. And because our team has differing needs and personal circumstances, we offer a high degree of flexibility to accommodate working patterns. We’re happy to discuss your situation during the interview and see how best we can support you. Don’t let Imposter Syndrome stop you from applying!