Vice President, People & Talent

About the Company

Armada is the hyperscaler for the edge, delivering modular AI infrastructure from first deployment to AI factory with speed, scale and sovereignty. Named one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies and to the CNBC Disruptor 50, Armada’s solutions are deployed in over 60 countries globally for organizations ranging from energy to defense. 

With nearly $500 million in funding to date, Armada is backed by leading investors including Founders Fund, Lux, BlackRock and Microsoft (M12), alongside strategic partnerships with Microsoft, Dell, Palantir, NVIDIA, SpaceX, and Skydio. We are building the infrastructure layer for sovereign and edge AI - rugged, deployable compute for customers that cannot rely on centralized cloud.

Working at Armada means taking ownership, driving autonomy, and delivering impact. You’ll tackle challenges that haven’t been solved before and help build something transformative from the ground up. What you do here will not only define your career but help further Armada’s mission to bridge the digital divide for customers around the world.  

ABOUT THE ROLE

Armada is hiring a Vice President, People and Talent to own the full People stack and build the infrastructure a globally distributed company needs to scale. This is end-to-end ownership: Talent Acquisition, Total Rewards, People Operations, and Compliance, with real depth expected in global mobility, entity and employer-of-record management, and compensation design.  

Roughly two thirds of the role is that operating stack. The remaining third is employee experience and culture: workspace and physical environment strategy, onboarding, and building learning and development programming from the ground up.  

This is not an execution-only seat. Our executive team expects the People function to carry a point of view on how talent decisions drive the business, and to bring that perspective into leadership conversations rather than waiting to be handed requirements. You will define the strategy and own the execution.  

You are building, not inheriting. Programs, policies, systems, and team headcount are yours to stand up.  

WHAT YOU WILL OWN

Talent Acquisition and Workforce Planning  

Own global recruiting strategy across technical and non-technical functions, and stay close enough to the work to personally run a critical search if needed  

Implement structured hiring processes that raise talent density and hold hiring managers accountable  

Move time-to-hire and quality-of-hire against defined baselines  

Partner with Finance to align headcount planning, workforce modeling, and geographic expansion with budget forecasting  

Total Rewards and Compensation  

Own compensation philosophy and band architecture, mapped to Armada levels and defensible against a named benchmarking source  

Own equity strategy at the pre-IPO stage: new hire grants, refresh and evergreen programs, 409A cadence, and the exception process  

Run the annual compensation and merit cycle in partnership with Finance, including geographic differentials across owned entities and employer-of-record markets  

Design and manage global benefits programs and renewals, balancing cost, competitiveness, and local requirements  

Prepare executive compensation recommendations and materials for the CEO, [the Board compensation committee,] and Finance  

People Operations, Compliance, and Systems  

Design and scale a People Operations framework that holds global consistency while allowing for local nuance  

Own the compliance posture across every operating jurisdiction, partnering with Legal on employment law, immigration, and risk mitigation  

Oversee payroll operations, vendor management, audit readiness, documentation standards, and internal controls  

Own the People technology stack (HRIS, ATS, payroll, performance, analytics) and the data governance that makes workforce reporting trustworthy  

International Exp …