Human Resources Lead

Location: Gurgaon (In-Studio)
Employment Type: Full-Time
Experience Level: 6–10 years preferred
Reports to: Founder’s Office (Anthony Lopez)

About Us
Lopez is a strategic design consultancy that discovers an organisation’s core truth and builds branding systems that align, scale, and stay clear across every touchpoint. We operate at the intersection of design, culture, and
purpose - with a sharp focus on clarity, systems thinking, and truth-seeking. At Lopez, HR is not a back-office function. It is the backbone of our culture. We’re looking for someone who can build the culture that builds everything else.

Role Overview
We are hiring an HR Lead who brings more than competence, someone who is emotionally intelligent, clear-thinking, and deeply aligned with our values. This is a high-touch, high-trust, and high-expectation role focused on nurturing leadership, supporting growth, handling complexity, and shaping people systems that reflect the soul of the organisation. This role is also deeply tied to sustaining high quality across the studio. We are a small but high-performing team. To deliver exceptional value to our clients, we must have exceptional people, and the only way to sustain that is by building a culture where competency, performance, and profitability are understood as one integrated system.

Key Responsibilities
1. Cultural Stewardship

  • Embed the Lopez philosophy (e.g., Designing What Endures, The Invisible Hand) into hiring, onboarding, performance and team development

  • Protect and promote values like integrity, honesty, accountability, competency, and discernment

  •  Lead internal initiatives that build trust, belonging, and team clarity

2. Talent Development and Leadership Building

  •  Design grooming frameworks for individuals showing potential but requiring development

  • Spot early leadership traits and build coaching programs (internal and external) for growth

  • Collaborate with team leads to map competencies and create role progression plans

  • Support the founder in running performance reviews, goal setting, and feedback cycles

3. Capacity Planning and Business Growth

  • Understand workload versus capacity for team planning
  • Support hiring aligned to business expansion, new verticals, and client expectations
  • Forecast talent requirements for upcoming project pipelines

4. People Operations and Systems

  • Oversee contracts, onboarding, payroll, attendance, and exit processes across full-time, part-time, consultant,
    and intern roles
  • Maintain clear, compliant, and people-sensitive documentation and HRMS records

  • Create scalable, low-bureaucracy systems to track performance, leave, and culture health

5. Conflict and Crisis Management

  •  Provide support for team members navigating burnout, conflict, or personal challenges
  • Manage team feedback loops with emotional maturity and confidentiality
  • Help create a safe space without becoming a rescuer

What Success Looks Like (First 6 Months)

  • Audit of current HR systems and people processes completed
  • Value-aligned induction and onboarding system implemented
  • Grooming plan launched for 1–2 team members
  • Leadership tracking dashboard or framework initiated
  • Visible culture of clarity, transparency, and mutual respect
  • Clear rapport built with the founders and team leads
  • Cost-to-output ratio improvements monitored and aligned to studio profitability

What We’re Looking For
Must-Haves:

  •  6+ years in HRBP, people operations, or organisational culture roles
  • Strong written and spoken English, with emotional maturity
  • Experience managing payroll, contracts, TDS, and basic compliance
  • Maturity to handle conflict, feedback, and people complexity
  • Comfort working in a lean, high-performance creative environment

Strong Pluses:

  • Experience in a creative, design-led, or startup culture
  • Systems thinking mindset and ability to build HR frameworks from scratch
  • Exposure to L&D, mentorship, or leadership development programs
  • Confidence in communication grounded in clarity, not performance

Philosophical Fit

At Lopez, we value truth-seeking, competency, and integrity. We believe in grooming over firing, clarity over hierarchy, and discernment over speed. We are looking for someone who understands that building a high-quality, high-performing, and financially sustainable team is the most strategic act of design leadership.

Notes

This role reports to the Founder’s Office and is part of the core leadership team. This is a full-time, in-studio role. Presence is expected during all key phases of onboarding, project cycles, and leadership planning.

 

Apply by sending an email to jobs@lopezdesign.com with the subject line HR Lead - NAME with a CV and cover letter.

 

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