The Focus Group Cape Town, South Africa 02 March 2026 Senior 90000 - 100000 Full Time Cost to Company 5 years - 8 years Skills Coaching Facilitating Talent Acquisition Talent Management Technology Industries Human Resources Financial Technology (Fintech) Job Description
What we seek:
Someone with strong experience within a Tech (ideally Fintech) environment, both from a people partnering & recruitment perspective, they need to be able to speak and think tech in everything that they do
Someone who is very tech savvy, is comfortable using AI agents to recruit, innovate and optimize
Strong competence with SLACK and GOOGLE SHEETS
Someone who comes from a start-up environment
This role role works very closely with demanding stakeholders
We are seeking a tech-savvy People Business Partner (PBP) for the Engineering and Product teams. This role translates the People needs of individual contributors, team leads, and people managers into practical, high-impact solutions that improve team performance, manager effectiveness, and employee experience.
You will be a key partner to the CTO and the President, supporting them to lead high-performing teams through growth, change, and complexity. You will embody ways of working, values, and culture, and you will build scalable People solutions by digitising everything that should not require direct human intervention. Your time should be reserved for the work that benefits most from a human partner: coaching, mentoring, facilitation, sound judgment, and prompting excellent system design.
You will partner closely with People Team (and where needed, external experts) to deliver joined-up outcomes. This is a hands-on role for someone who is passionate about talent acquisition and talent management, and who is comfortable rolling up their sleeves to handle operational work when required. You are accountable for the end-to-end employee journey for the teams you support, and you lead the intersection between the People Team and the high-performing teams you partner with, across both local and global team members (including independent contractors).
What you will do
1) Strategic business partnering ( Engineering + Product )
Partner closely with the CTO, President, and functional leaders to diagnose organisational needs and translate them into People plans that drive high performance and engagement.
Build strong context across Engineering and Product to proactively anticipate challenges related to structure, growth, capability, and leadership.
Provide clear, practical guidance to leaders navigating ambiguity, change, or sensitive people decisions.
2) Talent acquisition + talent management
Partner with hiring managers to plan and execute hiring across Engineering and Product, including role definition, interview design, decision quality, and candidate experience.
Strengthen talent management across your teams, including capability building, succession thinking, retention risks, internal mobility, and development planning.
3) Manager and team effectiveness ( coaching + facilitation )
Coach team leads and people managers to build high-performing teams, including feedback quality, role clarity, decision-making, and psychological safety
Facilitate manager and team lead enablement sessions (workshops, training cohorts, working sessions) that improve leadership capability and consistency across Engineering and Product.
Create enablement assets that scale (guides, templates, playbooks, short modules, AI-assisted nudges), so training does not rely on live delivery every time
4) Performance and progression
Drive effective high performance practices within Engineering and Product, supporting calibration, outcomes, and high-quality feedback.
Partner with leaders to define expectations and standards that are fair, consistent, and aligned to COMPANY?s culture and ways of working.
Enable strong career conversations by helping leaders interpret competency frameworks and apply them in practice.
5) Employee experience and lifecycle ownership (end-to-end)
Own the end-to-end employee journey for the Engineering and Product teams you support, ensuring an excellent employee and manager experience across key moments that matter.
Partner with People Team and other internal/external stakeholders to ensure processes are implemented well, with strong follow-through and clear ownership
Identify friction points and redesign processes to be simpler, clearer, and easier to self-serve.
6) Partner with People and external SMEs (joined-up delivery)
Bring together the right People Team and external subject matter experts or providers when needed, ensuring consistent, high-quality outcomes.
Translate specialist input into practical plans leaders can run with, and ensure changes land in day-to-day team practices.
7) Operational ownership (hands-on execution)
Roll up your sleeves to execute key operational People activities for your functions when needed, ensuring fast turnaround, high accuracy, and a high-trust employee experience.
Maintain strong operational hygiene: clear documentation, good decision records, and predictable turnaround times.
8) “ Digitise everything ” People solutions ( AI + automation )
Build self-serve systems for common People workflows, information, and decision support, reducing dependency on manual People intervention.
Use AI and technology responsibly to improve speed and quality across drafting, analysis, knowledge management, workflow design, intake, and triage
Maintain high standards for privacy, confidentiality, and sound judgment when using AI in People contexts.
9) Culture and ways of working
Model the COMPANY values and expectations in how you partner, communicate, and make decisions.
Help leaders reinforce culture through clear practices and consistent standards, not only messaging.
Contribute to continuous improvement by sharing learnings across the People team and building reusable playbooks.
10) Global workforce support ( employees + independent contractors )
Partner with People Ops and relevant internal/external experts to support the end-to-end journey for global employees and independent contractors, including onboarding, changes, performance practices, and exits.
Help leaders navigate cross-border complexity with clear guidance and high-quality execution, including differences in local practices, contracts, and ways of working.
Ensure the experience is consistent and aligned to COMPANY culture while respecting local requirements and operational realities.
Maintain high standards of documentation, confidentiality, and data quality across global workforce processes.
Minimum requirements
5+ years experience in People/HR, including meaningful experience in a People Partner, HRBP, or equivalent role
Bachelor ? s degree (or equivalent) in HR, Industrial Psychology, Business, Psychology, or a related field.
Experience working in a fast - paced startup or scaling environment (FinTech).
Experience supporting technical and/or product organisations (Engineering, Product, Security/IT, Data, etc.) is ESSENTIAL
Demonstrated capability to coach managers and influence senior stakeholders
Demonstrated facilitation capability (training managers/team leads; designing practical enablement).
Evidence of building scalable People practices through tooling, automation, knowledge systems, and/or process redesign.
Experience supporting a distributed workforce , ideally including global employees and / or independent contractors .
Strong written communication and comfort creating practical documentation
