Lead People & Culture (m/f/d)

About the Role at RobCo At RobCo, we develop AI-powered robotic systems that make industrial processes more autonomous, efficient, and scalable. Our Autonomous Manufacturing Platform combines modular industrial hardware with physical AI, enabling rapid deployment and continuous optimization in real production environments. With locations in Munich, San Francisco, and Austin, and backed by leading investors such as Lightspeed, Lingotto Innovation, and Sequoia, we are working to redefine industrial automation. At RobCo, we automate the ordinary, so humans can do the extraordinary. To achieve this, we are looking for an ambitious Lead People & Culture Manager (m/f/d) to help us establish RobCo as leading provider of automation solutions. In this pivotal leadership role, you will be the operational heartbeat of our People & Culture department. You will lead a small, dedicated team to translate our high-level people strategy into tangible results, acting as a key driver of our organizational growth. Your mission is to build and refine the infrastructure where our talent thrives, ensuring our culture scales as fast as our technology while mentoring and developing the internal P&C team. Your Responsibilities - Team Leadership: Lead and develop a small People & Culture team, fostering a culture of high performance, growth, and automation-first thinking. - Strategic Workforce Planning: Partner with department heads to forecast long-term talent needs, identifying critical skill gaps and designing organizational structures that support our scaling roadmap in Europe. - Change Management: Act as a key driver of organizational transitions, guiding teams and leaders through structural shifts and process evolutions to ensure high retention and cultural stability during rapid growth. - Leadership Mentoring: Serve as a senior sparring partner for department leads, providing expert guidance on team dynamics, conflict resolution, and high-level leadership best practices. - Strategic Implementation: Execute the people roadmap, taking full ownership of key projects like performance management cycles, compensation benchmarking, and talent development. - Operational Excellence: Oversee the day-to-day execution of the employee lifecycle, ensuring a seamless experience from the first interview to the final exit interview. - Culture Scaling: Act as a key guardian of RobCo’s culture, implementing initiatives that keep our core values alive across all European functions. - Employee Engagement: Drive data-driven engagement initiatives, analyzing feedback to implement improvements that make RobCo the best place to work in robotics. - Compliance & Standards: Ensure all P&C processes are lean, scalable, and fully compliant with German and European regulations. We're looking for someone who has: - Has completed a degree in Business Administration, Psychology, HR Management, or a related field. - Brings several years of HR experience in a fast-paced tech environment, with proven experience in leading a team. - Is equally comfortable setting a team's direction and diving into the execution of complex HR topics. - Thrives in dynamic environments and understands how to build processes that are flexible enough for a startup but robust enough for a global company. - Is strong communicator who can deliver tough feedback kindly and navigate complex interpersonal dynamics with ease. - Uses data to tell a story and prove the impact of P&C initiatives on the overall business. - Has excellent English skills to effectively lead and collaborate within our international team. German is a strong plus. Why join RobCo? - Develop modular, software-defined robotics solutions with us that set new standards in automation. - Help us build robots equipped with state-of-the-art AI that perceive their environment, analyze data, and make intelligent decisions in real time. - As part of a very dynamic and fast-growing scale-up, you will take on responsibility from day one, drive your own projects, and see the direct impact of your work. - Flat hierarchies, open communication, and regular 360° feedback enable fast decisions and support your professional and personal development. - Work out across Germany in over 7,200 studios with our subsidized Wellpass membership. - Flexible working hours, a modern office, and—depending on the role—the option to work from home. - Regular team events—from relaxed beer & pizza nights on the rooftop terrace to shared experiences on ski trips or at Oktoberfest. About RobCo RobCo was founded in late 2020 in Munich and develops AI-powered robotic systems that bring learning and autonomy to industrial processes. The Autonomous Manufacturing Platform combines modular industrial hardware with a software architecture for physical AI, enabling rapid implementation, continuous optimization, and application-specific performance. Through a Robotics-as-a-Service model, RobCo helps ind