Senior People Partner

Time commitment: Full-time preferred

Location: Hybrid working: three days in the London office (Mon/Wed/Thu) and two days remote. We consider alternative requests to this.

Office: 140 Borough High Street, London, SE1 1LB

Reporting to: People & Talent Director

About Paloma

In 2024, our founders, Mark and Darshak, were shocked to find that children needing an NHS autism or ADHD assessment were waiting 4-10 years for these assessments. Delayed assessments result in children being more likely to develop mental health conditions and fall behind in education. Furthermore, the much-needed pre/post-assessment support (outside of ADHD medications) is typically not funded by the NHS. 

These long waits have built up due to increased recognition and understanding of neurodevelopmental conditions and a lack of investment and innovation within the NHS to meet the growing demand.

Mark and Darshak, with their 25 years of combined NHS experience, including building services that have treated over 1,000,000 patients in obesity & ophthalmology, founded Paloma to change this. Our mission is to make NHS autism and ADHD assessments and care accessible within 4 weeks of a GP referral, and, in turn, help every child achieve their potential.

As of May 2026, we have successfully reduced waits to 3 months by;

• Taking a product-first approach to redesign the care pathway to give families a more consumer-like experience of care
• Our in-house product, engineering and AI team building our own autism and ADHD specific electronic patient record and AI documentation tool to free clinicians from their significant documentation burden to re-focus on supporting families
• Investing in expanding the clinician workforce and upskilling them in new ways of working.

We are proud that Paloma is:

• Loved by families, with 4.9 out of 5 Trustpilot and Google ratings
• Care Quality Commission (CQC) registered and quality-focused
• Clinically-led, with a team of 130 people, including over 80 clinicians supporting families through their assessment journey. We are hiring 100+ more roles over the next 12 months.
• A community of passionate, mission-driven and innovative team members who challenge the status quo and test and learn from new ideas and approaches.
• Backed by leading healthcare investors Triple Point and Heal Capital

What’s next?

• Whilst we have reduced wait times, it is estimated that up to 500,000 children are still waiting for an NHS autism or ADHD assessment. We won’t rest until this comes down.
• We want to build new services to support families and children diagnosed with autism or ADHD who feel lost after their assessments when the NHS is no longer there for them.

 

The Opportunity

We are growing our People Team and moving to a Partnering model, where our People Partners own key stakeholder relationships and specific topics across the employee lifecycle spanning employee relations, people ops, engagement, wellbeing, and learning & development.

We believe the best teams are built from a variety of strengths. We’re looking for T or M-shaped People Partners. Rather than hiring for one specialism or experience with a specific stakeholder group, we've deliberately kept this job description broad; we want to see the range of skills that come through and shape our team's remit around strengths. When answering the application questions, we will ask you to describe your specialism. 

With strong performance in this role, you can progress to Lead People Partner.

Day-to-Day Responsibilities

The list below is representative, not exhaustive; your day-to-day will flex around the stakeholder group and lifecycle areas you end up owning.

Partnering with your stakeholder group

• Act as the trusted people partner for your stakeholder group, understanding team dynamics and performance
• Support managers through the full range of people moments; performance concerns, restructures, sensitive conversations with practical, timely guidance
• Build strong relationships so you're seen as a first port of call for addressing issues proactively

Across the employee lifecycle

• People ops: own onboarding/offboarding, compliance (right-to-work, DBS, HRIS data) and, payroll review with support from our People Operations Associate
• Engagement: run the listening loop (surveys, eNPS, exit interviews) and turn insights into outcomes and initiatives
• Employee relations: manage ER casework such as grievances, disciplinaries, PIPs and absence, with support from external HR advisors where needed
• Wellbeing: own the wellbeing strategy and related benefits, spotting early signs of burnout
• Learning & development: build and run the L&D offering, from onboarding through manager training and development plans

Cross-team

• Work closely with our People & Talent Director to keep policies, ways of working and employee experience consistent across the business
• Constantly look for ways to use tools and automation, including AI, to make people processes more efficient
• We work as one team, which means jumping into other areas of the employee lifecycle when needed

About You

This role is for you if...

• You like building things from scratch and iterating based on feedback, rather than running a fixed playbook
• You enjoy working in a fast-paced environment where predictability isn't always high
• You take an empathetic and commercial approach to decision-making
• You want to push what's possible via automation and AI
• You know when to handle something yourself and when to lean on external advisors or our People Director, rather than needing to have all the answers yourself

This role isn't for you if...

• You prefer a narrow, predictable remit, or need a highly predictable, low-ambiguity environment
• You only like to work at a strategic level; our People Partner roles mix strategic initiatives with hands-on partnering
• You want to be a fully remote worker; we value in-person office time

Required Experience and Skills

We don't expect any one candidate to bring deep expertise across every area below. Generalist knowledge across all and strengths in some is what we’re looking for;

• Strong experience partnering with Tech and/or Delivery Teams ideally through a period of rapid startup or scaleup growth
• Experience in one or more of: employee engagement, employee relations, people ops/compliance, or learning & development
• Confident in advising managers on team health, performance and people processes
• Comfortable managing an HRIS and keeping employee data accurate (we use Humaans)
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, especially in policy documents and sensitive conversations
• Strong organisational skills, able to juggle multiple initiatives at once
• Demonstrated empathy and interpersonal skills when handling ER issues

Desirable Experience and Skills

• Experience within a regulated or healthcare setting
• Coaching training or qualification

Don't meet every requirement?

Studies have shown that women and people from ethnic minority groups are less likely to apply for jobs unless they meet every qualification. Paloma is dedicated to building a diverse and top-performing workplace, so if you're excited about this role but your past experience doesn't align with every qualification, we strongly encourage you to apply. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles!

Why Join Paloma?

You will be part of a mission-driven organisation that's transforming access to autism and ADHD care in England. For all employees, we offer:

• A strong and positive culture that prioritises team building, transparency, and career development, including protected time and budget for team connection and learning
• Comprehensive compensation, including a salary of £65,000 per year (with flexibility based on experience), annual salary reviews, and a 5% employer pension contribution
• For employees working at least 0.8 FTE: equity through Share Options in Paloma Health, and optional Private Medical Insurance and Employee Assistance Programme
• Home Office Equipment Allowance
• 37 days of annual leave (28 standard days, plus eight bank holidays, plus your birthday off), with the option to buy up to 5 additional days, plus 2 days per year of special leave
• A premium performance company laptop and NHS discounts, including the Blue Light Card (as we are an NHS provider)

Equality & Diversity

Paloma Health is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace and throughout the application process. We do not discriminate based on any protected characteristic.

Accommodations

We're glad to accommodate candidates who need adjustments throughout the hiring process. We encourage you to be open about the adjustments you need, so we can adapt our interview process accordingly.

Safer Recruitment & Pre-Employment Checks

Paloma Health ensures that supporting people to be safe is at the heart of our work and a key priority. As part of our pre-employment checks, you will be asked to complete a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check, at Enhanced, Standard or Basic level depending on your role. We are committed to safer recruitment practices and expect all applicants to share our dedication to safeguarding.

Application Process

Please apply via our website. We understand that applying for a new job requires significant effort, and we appreciate the time you put into it and look forward to reviewing your application.

1st Stage: Talent Screen
2nd Stage: Dr Mark Jenkins  (CEO & Co-Founder)
3rd Stage: in-person scenario task with Katie Beales (People Director) Aoife Barron (VP Product and Operations)
Final Stage: meeting with Dr Mark Jenkins  (CEO & Co-Founder) & Katie Beales (People Director)
We may combine stage 3 and the final stage

Join us and be part of our journey to revolutionise access to NHS autism and ADHD care!