Head of People & Culture (f/m/d) - #2682014

About TACTILIA

At TACTILIA, we are building the industry-ready robotic hand that closes one of the biggest gaps in Physical AI. Spun out of Schunk, the global market leader in gripping technology, we combine a decade of robotic-hand expertise and real industrial access with the speed and ambition of a deep-tech startup.

This isn't a research project waiting for its first customer. We already have a product, customers are ready to use it, and we are launching now. Your work will directly shape the team, culture and processes that make that possible.

You will join at the moment when a handful of people become a real organization: how do we build a team, and the People & Culture foundations behind it, that are as reliable and scalable as the product we're bringing to market?

The Role

As TACTILIA grows from a handful of people into a full organization, we're looking for our first Head of People & Culture. You will build and run our People & Culture function from the ground up: hands-on recruiting and active sourcing for open roles today, and the strategic foundations – from workforce planning to performance management – that will carry us through the next phase of growth.

This role sits close to the CEO and the department leads and covers both the day-to-day and the long-term. You'll be sourcing candidates yourself one day and advising a department lead on team structure the next.

As TACTILIA grows from a handful of people into a full organization, we're looking for our first Head of People & Culture. You will build and run our People & Culture function from the ground up: hands-on recruiting and active sourcing for open roles today, and the strategic foundations – from workforce planning to performance management – that will carry us through the next phase of growth.

This role sits close to the CEO and the department leads and covers both the day-to-day and the long-term. You'll be sourcing candidates yourself one day and advising a department lead on team structure the next.

What you will do

• Recruiting & Active Sourcing — Own end-to-end recruiting for TACTILIA – from writing job profiles and postings to actively sourcing candidates for hard-to-fill technical and commercial roles, running interviews and negotiating offers. Build our sourcing channels and employer brand from scratch.
• Strategic Workforce Planning — Partner with the CEO, CTO and department heads to forecast long-term talent needs, identify critical skill gaps and design organizational structures that support our scaling roadmap across Europe.
• Employee Lifecycle & Operations — Oversee the day-to-day execution of the employee lifecycle, from the first interview through onboarding and development to, where it comes to that, the exit interview.
• Change Management — Act as a key driver of organizational change, guiding teams and leads through structural shifts and process changes as we grow, with an eye on retention and cultural stability.
• People Roadmap & Projects — Take ownership of key P&C projects such as performance management cycles, compensation benchmarking and talent development – building processes that are flexible enough for a startup but robust enough to scale.
• Culture — Act as a guardian of TACTILIA's culture, keeping it alive as the team grows across functions and locations.
• Engagement — Drive data-driven engagement initiatives, using feedback to make TACTILIA a place people want to stay.
• Compliance & Standards — Make sure all P&C processes are lean, scalable and fully compliant with German and European regulations.

What you bring

• A degree in Business Administration, Psychology, HR Management or a related field.
• Several years of HR experience in a fast-paced tech or industrial environment, including hands-on recruiting and active sourcing, with proven experience leading a team.
• You're equally comfortable setting a team's direction and diving into the execution of complex HR topics yourself – sourcing and closing candidates included.
• A track record of building HR processes that are flexible enough for a startup but robust enough for a growing, global organization.
• Strong communication skills – you can deliver tough feedback kindly and navigate complex interpersonal situations with ease.
• Comfortable using data to tell a story and show the impact of P&C initiatives on the business.
• Excellent English skills to work within our international team. German is a strong plus.

Bonus

• Experience setting up or scaling an HR function from scratch, ideally in a startup, spin-off or corporate venture.
• Background in a robotics, hardware or deep-tech environment.
• An existing network you can draw on for active sourcing in engineering or robotics.

The next chapter of robotics won't be built in a lab. It will be built by people who care about what happens when technology meets the real world.

At TACTILIA, you'll work on one of the hardest open problems in robotics: giving machines the dexterity, reliability, and robustness they need to interact with the physical world at industrial scale.

The technology is taking shape. The team is being built. And the standards for robotic hands and their skills are still wide open.

That means your decisions will have a lasting impact — not just on a product, but on what comes next for Physical AI.

Build the hand. Define the standard. Shape what comes next.

If you're excited by the challenge of building robotic hands that work reliably in the real world, we'd love to hear from you.

Send us your CV to [email protected] or apply here:  

https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/tactiliarobotics/44cedbf7-207a-4e83-980e-023f50fe75a3