• Current Engagement: SLT Standing-Up & Contractor-to-Perm Transition (Fixed-Scope Project)

• Potential Follow-On: Ongoing Fractional Head of People - Subject to successful delivery of initial scope

• Location: Remote-first, with in-person sessions as required

• Start Date: Immediate

We are a boutique tech consultancy. We build AI and data engineering solutions for global reinsurers, helping them rebuild systems and processes with a depth of industry domain knowledge that generalist consultancies take years to reach. We have been delivering high-value transformations for five years and continue to scale rapidly.

As the business has grown, several senior contractors have reached the tenure and performance level to warrant permanent status, and the founders are standing up a Senior Leadership Team to relieve day-to-day pressure that has begun affecting delivery quality. We need experienced, pragmatic HR input to get both of these right, quickly and fairly.

The Role & Engagement Structure

We are seeking a Fractional Head of People who brings practical, hands-on experience negotiating individual comp and title changes, alongside sound judgement on performance and promotion frameworks for a contractor-heavy workforce.

Please note: the immediate opportunity is scoped around the items below, tied to the current SLT and contractor-to-perm transition. Ongoing fractional support beyond this will be evaluated following successful delivery.

Key Responsibilities:

Capability & Capacity Assessment: Conduct an objective, third-party review of current team capacity and the contractor-to-permanent mix, to inform which roles should convert and where gaps remain.
Contractor vs. Permanent Composition: Advise on the target composition of the workforce, balancing flexibility against the stability and institutional knowledge the business now needs.
Contractor-to-Perm Hiring Negotiation: Lead negotiations on role titles and compensation for contractors moving to permanent status, sitting between the founders and each individual so these conversations don't fall to founders directly.
Contractor Performance Management: Design and advise on a performance management approach for both permanent and contractor staff. For contractors, this must be framed around SOW ownership and output, not line management, given their engagement basis, and should not introduce employment-status risk.
Advice: Titles & Promotion Criteria: Advise on job titles and promotion criteria across the org, for the first cohort of perm hires. Particular care needed here: the first people promoted will set a precedent, so criteria need to be fair, defensible, and give people somewhere to go next, not a one-off decision made under time pressure.

About You & Requirements

Consultancy Experience: You've worked in or with professional services or consultancy environments before, and understand how that context differs from in-house HR, billable utilisation, project-based teams, and a workforce whose value is measured against client outcomes rather than fixed job descriptions.
Pragmatic, Not Textbook: You separate legal requirement from operational preference, and you're comfortable telling us which is which rather than defaulting to the most cautious option in every case.
Contractor Workforce Experience: You understand the practical realities of a contractor-heavy delivery model, including the IR35 implications of how contractor performance is managed and communicated.
Direct Negotiation Experience: You're comfortable having individual comp and title conversations directly with contractors, not just designing the framework for someone else to deliver.
Promotion Framework Design: You've built or advised on career progression criteria before, ideally in a professional services or consultancy environment where title inflation and precedent-setting are live risks.

Fully Remote

Outside IR35

Toucanberry Tech

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Fractional Head of People - Contractor to Perm Transition