Lead People Partner

foodpanda is part of the Delivery Hero Group, the world’s pioneering local delivery platform, our mission is to deliver an amazing experience—fast, easy, and to your door. We operate in around 65 countries worldwide. Headquartered in Berlin, Germany. Delivery Hero has been listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange since 2017 and is part of the MDAX stock market index.

Organizational Philosophy & Decision Frameworks

• Define and drive a clear, consistent philosophy for how the organization makes people decisions across hiring, performance, rewards, and talent management.

• Eliminate inconsistencies and misalignment across functions, ensuring fairness, credibility, and clarity in all people-related decisions.

• Act as the “mainframe” guiding how leaders think about talent and organizational effectiveness.

 

Organizational Design, Performance Standards, Talent Density, and Leadership Capability

• Anticipate future business needs and proactively design organization structures, roles, and workforce plans aligned to strategy and operating realities.

• Ensure the organization is structured for clarity, accountability, and high performance, continuously evolving it as business needs change. Actively identify and correct misalignment in performance ratings, rewards, and talent decisions.

• Own and continuously raise talent density by identifying, accelerating, and positioning high-potential individuals into critical roles.

• Intervene early and decisively to address capability gaps, and support leaders in making high-quality talent decisions. 

• Set and uphold a high bar across hiring and performance, ensuring every talent decision strengthens the organization.

• Define and institutionalize rigorous assessment and evaluation frameworks, ensuring consistency and integrity across hiring, performance, and rewards. Maintain close involvement in critical hires and calibration discussions to ensure quality and alignment.

• Balance speed with discipline, protecting long-term talent quality while enabling business momentum.

 

Organizational Health, Leadership Intervention & Targeted Action

• Diagnose risks to leadership effectiveness, team health, and organizational alignment using both stakeholder insight and data, navigating complexity with sound judgement.

• Intervene early and decisively in complex or sensitive situations, including challenging senior leaders where necessary, and translating insights into targeted actions that address root causes.

• Drive measurable improvements in employee sentiment, effectiveness, and alignment through precise, high-impact interventions that are individualized yet scalable.

 

Building a Self-Sustaining Organization & People Capability

• Build leadership capability, systems, and operating rhythms that enable the organization to perform at a high level without over-reliance on HR, while maintaining strong governance and oversight.

• Partner leaders to co-own people and performance outcomes, strengthening their capability and accountability over time.

• Coach and develop the HRBP and HR Operations counterparts, role modeling what “great HRBP” looks like and systemically uplift the capability and impact of the People function.

• Ensure People practices scale effectively with the business, acting as a multiplier of organizational effectiveness rather than a constraint.

 

Experience

• 10+ years of experience across HR / People roles, including significant time in HR Business Partnering or People leadership roles in fast-growing, dynamic organizations (tech, startup, scale-up, or similar environments preferred).

• Proven experience partnering senior business leaders on organizational design, talent strategy, and high-stakes people decisions.

• Experience operating in environments where speed, ambiguity, and change are constant.

Capabilities

• Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence and align senior leaders.

• Strong organizational judgement and business acumen, with the ability to anticipate needs and shape outcomes.

• Ability to diagnose organizational and talent challenges quickly and accurately, and translate insights into action.

• Confidence to challenge senior leaders constructively while maintaining strong, trusted relationships.

• Strong judgement in handling complex, sensitive people decisions, including performance and exits.

Personal Attributes

• Clear, structured thinker who communicates with precision and clarity.

• Proactive and forward-looking, able to anticipate issues and act ahead of them.

• Comfortable operating in high ownership environments with minimal bureaucracy.

• Courageous, principled, and highly trusted by stakeholders.