Senior People & Culture Manager

About the Role

Minerva Humanoids builds humanoid robots for the most dangerous jobs on the planet: offshore rigs, refineries, chemical plants, bomb disposal, and hazardous substance decontamination. We are a small, fast-moving team across San Francisco and Munich, and the people we hire in the next two years will decide whether we succeed. Getting the right engineers in the door, paid fairly, set up legally in two countries, and working well together is mission-critical work.

As Senior People & Culture Manager, you own every P&C topic across the company, globally. Based in Munich (hybrid work possible) and working closely with the founding team, you are the first dedicated P&C hire: you run hiring end to end, build the foundations (contracts, compensation, equity, policies, systems) in Germany and the US, and shape the culture of a company that moves quickly and takes safety seriously. There is no playbook to inherit and no team to delegate to yet. You build it yourself, and as we scale, you grow into Head of People & Culture and build the function around you.

What You'll Do

• Own recruiting end to end across the US and Germany: hiring plans with team leads, sourcing, interview processes, offers, and closing candidates in a competitive market for robotics talent.
• Build the P&C foundations for both entities: employment contracts, policies, handbooks, and compliance with German and US labor law; work with external counsel, payroll providers, and tax advisors.
• Own compensation and equity: salary bands, offer structures, equity grants and plans for US and German employees, and benchmarking against the market.
• Run onboarding, offboarding, relocation, and visa and immigration processes so new hires are productive from week one, wherever they come from.
• Set up and run the P&C systems stack (HRIS, ATS, payroll interfaces) and keep employee data clean and compliant, including GDPR.
• Shape culture and performance: feedback and review processes, career paths for engineers, and the rituals that keep a two-continent team working as one.
• Be the trusted point of contact for every employee and leader on sensitive topics, and act fast and fairly when something goes wrong.

What You'll Bring

• 5+ years in People & Culture, HR, or Talent roles, ideally at a fast-growing startup or scale-up; hardware, deep tech, or robotics is a strong plus.
• Hands-on generalist experience: you have hired, written contracts, set up processes, and handled employee relations yourself, not only managed others doing it.
• Solid knowledge of German labor law and practice; experience with US employment or international setups.
• A track record of hiring technical talent, especially senior engineers.
• Speed and ownership: you make decisions with incomplete information, follow through, and keep many threads moving at once.
• Fluent English and German.

Nice to Have

• Experience building a P&C function from zero as the first hire.
• Equity plans across jurisdictions: US stock options and German VSOP or similar.

Compensation & Benefits

We believe that those working on life-saving missions should share in the success of that mission.

• Very competitive base salary.
• Significant equity in Minerva Humanoids.
• Hybrid work possible, based in Munich.
• Relocation support to Munich.
• Clear path to Head of People & Culture as the company scales.