People Performance Manager

📈 Who We Are: We are rebuilding the energy transaction, making it transparent and fair. We're rebuilding how energy is bought and sold. That means cutting out middlemen, connecting businesses directly with renewable generators, and ensuring every transaction is traceable and transparent . We're a 160+ person team - operators, data scientists, engineers, customer champions and energy experts - backed by top-tier investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Hitachi Ventures, Allianz, AlbionVC and Atomico. We closed a $75M Series B round in early 2026, taking our total funding to $94M, and we now power energy for over 4,000 UK businesses across 8,500+ sites , with over £75m in value returned to businesses and generators so far. We're a technology company solving the energy industry, not an energy company. Some people call us a neo-utility, the neo-bank idea, applied to energy. The industry is noticing. We were crowned Europe's Most Exciting Tech Company at the GP Bullhound Allstars awards , came in at #6 on LinkedIn's Top Startups 2026 in the UK, #7 on the Scaling Europe 50 of Europe's fastest-growing companies, and #14 on Sifted's AI 100 . Learn more about us on our website . 🚀 The Role We're hiring a People Performance Manager to join our Performance Service. tem is growing fast. Our goal is to get better as we get bigger - revenue growing faster than headcount. In practice that means keeping our strongest people engaged and performing, getting new joiners productive quickly, and enabling our leaders to multiply their impact over time. Most companies solve that with layers of management. We don't. Our leaders (Player-Coaches) coach their teams while staying hands-on with the work, which means the systems around them have to do more of the lifting. That's where the Performance Service comes in. We're a team of four, and we own how tem runs as an organisation: the operating rhythm (how work gets planned, tracked, escalated and reported), the onboarding and development that build capability, the frameworks that define what good performance looks like and how people progress and get paid, and the operational backbone of contracts, benefits and payroll. We don't own recruitment. We're adding a second Performance Partner because we need more hands on deck - both partnering with our leaders day to day, and building the frameworks that support them. Your patch is sustained performance - the part that runs continuously once someone is through the door. You'll carry a portfolio of leaders across our Engines and Services that you're accountable for, and you'll co-own the frameworks that sit underneath them alongside the rest of the team. You will not be handed a finished playbook to administer. You'll report into the Performance Service Manager. HR experience is welcome but not required - we're open to operators, people who've led teams, and the sort of person who ends up owning whatever the company needs next. In your first 12 months, you might: Become the first call for a portfolio of leaders on anything to do with their people - performance calls, team decisions and hard conversations. Co-design how progression, performance standards, evaluation and reward actually work at tem, alongside the rest of the Performance team. Handle live cases end to end - performance management, difficult conversations, exits and restructures. Use AI and automation so the operational layer runs itself and your time goes on judgement, not process. Turn recurring employee and manager pain points into better processes, tools, guidance or self-service, and measure whether they work. 🛠️ Responsibilities Coach and challenge: be a leader's first call on anything to do with their people - a decision they want a second view on, coaching on how to handle a situation, or a read on employment law - and hold a position when you disagree with them. Raise the bar: hold leaders to a high standard on performance, potential, pay and progression - help them make sharper calls, and hold consistency across your patch. Handle live cases end to end: performance management, difficult conversations, exits and restructures. Build to delight: shape how progression, performance standards, evaluation and reward actually work at tem, alongside the rest of the Performance team. We treat our people like top athletes, and our aim is to delight them at every step of their employee experience - the systems around them have to express that at every contact point. Design for our shape, not the textbook: we index on outcomes and impact in everything - how progression works, how teams are structured, what leaders spend their time on. Most standard people frameworks assume a management hierarchy we don't have. Automate the repeatable: use AI and automation so the operational layer runs itself and your time goes on judgement, not process. Think in process, scalability and iteration: turn recurring employee and manager pain points into better processes, tools, guidance or self-service. Measure whether they work and redesign when they don't fit the purpose. ✅ Requirements You do not need a CIPD qualification, and you do not need to have worked in a large, established HR function. You might have been a founder's associate or Chief of Staff at a Series A or B startup, holding the place together while it scaled. You might have built a People function from scratch and taken it from a one-person band to a well-oiled machine. You might have run a team or an Operations function where the people calls were effectively yours, even if People or HR never appeared in your job title. Or you might have done a different job that helped you build the skills below. A background in HR might help you do this job well, but it is not a requirement. Must-Haves You've held real accountability for decisions on people - you've partnered with leaders, or managed a team yourself, where hiring, performance and exit calls were either yours or made on your guidance. You can be trusted with the hardest conversations in the business and you're recognised for how you handle them, and you understand how decisions about people shape culture and employer brand - balancing efficiency with empathy. You've worked in or towards building a high-performance culture, and you're a confident challenger who carries conviction and can influence leadership decisions. You're comfortable operating without a playbook, in a company where the requirements and the shape of your role change constantly. You think from first principles, get to the root cause of complex problems, weigh competing considerations and anticipate second-order consequences. You're fluent with Notion, automation and AI tooling - your instinct is to build the thing rather than do it manually a second time - and you write clearly enough that a busy person reads it once and comes away with a clear idea of the situation and the next actions. Desirable Employment relations experience in the UK, Europe or the US - we operate across the UK and Europe today, with plans to expand to the US soon. Experience working across multiple countries, including employer of record arrangements. Compensation and benchmarking experience - salary banding, pay review cycles, market data. 🎁 Benefits & Perks Stock options so everyone has ownership in our mission. 25 days holiday plus public holidays. Swap public holidays for the ones that matter most to you, and enjoy your birthday off. Remote first and flexible working, with clear core hours and no internal meetings on Friday afternoons. Up to GBP1,200 or EUR1,400 per year for your remote setup. Up to GBP150 or EUR170 per month for wellbeing. 🤝 Interview Process We move fast. Most processes take 2 to 3 weeks from first chat to offer. If you need us to adapt anything, let us know. Intro call with our Talent team. Skills interview, which might include a practical exercise we may ask you to prepare in advance. Hiring Manager interview. Bar Raiser interview with leadership stakeholders. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds, experiences, and identities, including those that are traditionally underrepresented in the tech and energy sectors. If you’re excited about this role but not sure you meet every requirement, we’d still love to hear from you. Your unique perspective could be exactly what we’re looking for.