People And Culture Lead
Location Bengaluru — ARTGarage Campus
Employment type - Full-time/Hybrid
Experience - 6–8 years; startup or deep-tech / R&D exposure preferred
Reports to - Project Director & CEO @ARTPARK
ABOUT ARTPARK
We build companies! ARTPARK (AI & Robotics Technology Park) is a Section 8 not-for-profit promoted by IISc Bengaluru and supported by the Government of India, and as a venture-builder we co-found, fund and scale deep-tech ventures from first principles to real-world deployment — across advanced robotics, Industry 5.0, health data & AI, language, and wired & wireless technology.
Behind the ventures is a core internal team spanning finance, procurement, facilities, legal and operations — the infrastructure layer that keeps the whole ecosystem moving. This team is just as important as the companies we build, and just as deserving of intentional people practice. This is a high-ownership, mission-driven environment where researchers, founders, engineers and operators work at speed on ambiguous, high-stakes problems, and this hire will directly shape how
ARTPARK attracts, grows and retains the talent behind that work.
ABOUT THE ROLE
This role sits at the intersection of two distinct people challenges: building culture and performance systems for an internal team that spans finance, procurement, and facilities — and doing the same for a portfolio of early-stage ventures in constant flux. You will operate in conditions were defining success upfront is often impossible, and your job is to build systems that reflect that reality rather than paper over it.
A critical part of this role is also human: navigating interpersonal tension, facilitating difficult conversations between team members, and being a trusted, neutral presence when conflict arises. You will be the person people come to when they don’t know how to have a conversation — and you’ll need to know when to coach from the sidelines and when to step into the room.
WHAT YOU WILL DO
Performance Management in a Fluid Environment
• Own The Performance Cycle: Lead goal/OKR setting, mid-year and annual reviews, calibration, and performance improvement plans.
• Design For Ambiguity: Build performance frameworks using qualitative, retrospective, and contribution-based approaches, adapting goals as priorities evolve while maintaining accountability.
• Build A Shared Language: Create a common performance philosophy across structurally different functions, so a facilities coordinator and a research engineer engage with the same approach even where their metrics are incomparable
• Coach Managers: Equip managers to give honest, growth-oriented feedback continuously, and normalise that success criteria can evolve mid-cycle without losing accountability
Culture & Employee Engagement
• Strengthen Organisational Culture: Build a cohesive culture across research, operations, venture-building, finance, and corporate teams.
• Measure And Act: Run engagement surveys, analyse insights, and drive meaningful culture improvements.
• Strengthen The Culture: Build a cohesive culture across research, operations, venture-building, finance, and corporate teams.
• Custodian Of Values: Translate ARTPARK’s values into everyday practice and protect a psychologically safe workplace
Conflict Management & Facilitation
• Trusted Facilitator: Act as a trusted, neutral presence in interpersonal conflicts across hierarchies, functions and seniority levels — the person people come to when they don’t know how to have a conversation
• Coach And De-escalate: Develop managers’ capability in difficult conversations, conflict resolution, and psychologically safe leadership
• Build Conflict Literacy: Create processes and capabilities that help teams navigate disagreements constructively.
Talent Acquisition & Onboarding
• Strategic Hiring Partner: Partner with hiring managers across research, programmes, operations, and corporate functions to attract exceptional talent
• Support Portfolio Ventures: Help incubated startups build scalable hiring, onboarding, and people practices suited to early-stage growth.
• Build a Talent Engine: Develop a proactive sourcing strategy that creates a continuous pipeline of high-quality candidates.
• Own Onboarding: deliver a structured experience that gets new joiners productive, connected and mission-aligned fast
Organization Development & Learning
• Build Capability: Design leadership development, manager capability programmes, and learning initiatives for a fast- paced innovation ecosystem
• Support Organisation Design: Partner with leadership on restructures, new functions, workforce planning, and role clarity as the organisation evolves.
Employee Relations, Org Design & Wellbeing
• Trusted People Partner: Handle employee matters with discretion, fairness, and empathy while supporting managers on people decisions.
• Drive Engagement & Retention: Conduct stay conversations, identify retention risks, and strengthen the overall employee experience.
HR Operations, Policy & Compliance
• Compliance: Ensure compliance with statutory requirements, POSH, and HR policies.
• Operational Excellence: Own accurate payroll inputs and full-and-final settlements, keep the HRIS clean, and report on people metrics — engagement, attrition and retention — for leadership
• People Analytics & Reporting: Provide leadership and funders with accurate people metrics, hiring updates, and compliance reports.
WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR
Must have
• 6–8 years of progressive, hands-on HR experience across the full employee cycle — onboarding to exit, performance, engagement, L&D and statutory compliance
• Experience in a startup, scale-up or deep-tech / R&D organisation, and comfort with ambiguity as a permanent condition rather than a transitional phase
• Demonstrated ability to design performance systems that don’t rely on rigid upfront KPIs — qualitative, retrospective and contribution-based approaches
• Strong facilitation and conflict-resolution skills — you have sat in difficult rooms and helped people find a way through
• Experience supporting structurally diverse functions (finance, procurement, facilities, operations), not only product or commercial teams
• High emotional intelligence and absolute discretion with confidential and sensitive matters
• Data-literate — fluent with HRIS / payroll systems and comfortable using people metrics to make decisions
• Fluency in English and Hindi; working knowledge of Kannada strongly preferred for building trust across a regionally rooted team
• Postgraduate qualification in HR / Management
• High ownership, with a high bar for fairness and care
Good to have
• Exposure to research institutions, technology parks, incubators or venture-studio / multi-entity structures (IISc / IIT / IISER-linked settings a plus)
• Familiarity with OKR frameworks in fast-changing environments where goals shift mid-cycle
• Hands-on organisational-design and restructuring experience
• Recruiting-led experience — building talent pipelines, employer branding or outbound sourcing
• SHRM / relevant HR certification
THIS ROLE IS NOT FOR EVERYONE
This is not a role for someone who needs clean org charts and stable job descriptions to do good people work. It is also not a startup HR role where everyone speaks the same language and shares the same working style. The internal team has the complexity and diversity of a mid-sized professional-services organisation. If that makes this sound harder, it should — and it should also make it sound more interesting.
WHY ARTPARK
• Genuine variety — no two weeks, no two teams and no two problems will look alike
• Influence over how an entire ecosystem of ventures thinks about people, culture and performance
• Autonomy to design from first principles, with leadership that understands why that takes time
• Real ownership — your work reaches leadership directly and defines how a high-performing deep-tech team is built
• Mission-driven work of national scale, for society, economy and sovereignty
• Competitive compensation and benefits — details shared during the process