CPO Recruitment — Chief People Officer

Exec Capital recruits Chief People Officers for technology companies, scale-ups and growth businesses across the UK. We place CPOs on a permanent, interim and fractional basis — delivering a curated shortlist within 3–7 working days.

Call 020 3834 9616 — shortlist in 3–7 working days

About Our Founder — Adrian Lawrence FCA

Exec Capital was founded by Adrian Lawrence FCA, a Fellow of the ICAEW with over two decades of experience in C-suite executive search and senior finance leadership. Adrian holds a BSc from Queen Mary College, University of London and has placed Chief People Officers, CHROs and senior people leaders across technology businesses, PE-backed scale-ups and established corporates throughout the UK. He holds an ICAEW practising certificate and leads our most senior searches personally, conducting candidate assessments himself. Our CPO practice is informed by direct experience of the culture-building, talent challenges and leadership dynamics that define high-growth technology businesses.

Published Research & Thought Leadership — Adrian Lawrence FCA’s peer-reviewed publications on ResearchGate include The Evolution of Fractional C-Suite Leadership in Modern UK Businesses (March 2026) and The Strategic Role of Fractional and Interim Executives in Supporting Organisational Growth (March 2026, co-authored). These works draw on our direct experience of how fractional and interim CPO appointments create measurable value in scaling businesses.

Exec Capital operates in accordance with the UK government’s voluntary code of conduct for executive search firms.

What Is a Chief People Officer (CPO)?

A Chief People Officer is the most senior people and culture leader in a technology company or growth business — a C-suite executive with full accountability for the talent strategy, employer brand, culture, organisational design, leadership development, reward, and people operations that determine how well the business attracts, retains and develops the people it needs to scale. The CPO sits at the executive committee as a genuine strategic peer to the CEO, CFO and CTO — not as a functional HR lead, but as a commercial partner in the decisions that determine the business’s trajectory.

The Chief People Officer designation emerged from the technology sector as a deliberate signal that people leadership in high-growth businesses requires a fundamentally different approach from traditional HR. Where HR in established corporations was primarily defined by process, compliance and operational efficiency, the CPO role in a technology company is defined by culture architecture, talent velocity and organisational scalability. The CIPD’s Profession Map recognises this evolution — the most senior people leaders are now expected to be full strategic partners in business decision-making, contributing commercial insight alongside their people expertise.

The CPO title is most common in technology companies, SaaS businesses, fintech, scale-ups and other organisations where the employer brand, engineering talent acquisition and product-culture fit are existential business concerns. In financial services, professional services and large corporates, the equivalent role is typically designated Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) — the scope of accountability is the same, but the framing and emphasis differ. Exec Capital recruits across both designations and can advise on which profile is most appropriate for your specific business and culture.

Chief People Officer (CPO)	CHRO	HR Director
Typical context: tech, SaaS, scale-up, fintech	Typical context: corporate, financial services, listed	Any sector, operational HR scope
Culture-first, employer brand, product-thinking	Governance-driven, process and compliance	HR policy, employee relations, admin
Full C-suite, ExCo peer	Full C-suite, ExCo peer	Reports to CPO, CHRO, COO or CEO
Engineering talent, rapid headcount growth	Regulatory workforce, SMCR, pension governance	Operational HR delivery
£110,000 – £250,000+ base + equity	£120,000 – £300,000+ base	£70,000 – £120,000 base

CPO Salary Benchmarks — UK 2026

Chief People Officer compensation in technology and growth businesses reflects both the seniority of the role and the equity dimension that is standard at this level in VC and PE-backed environments. The benchmarks below reflect current UK market rates across permanent, fractional and interim CPO appointments.

Role Type	Business Context	Compensation Range
CPO — Series C / growth-stage tech	200–1,000 employees, VC-backed	£140,000 – £220,000 base + equity
CPO — PE-backed technology or SaaS	300–800 employees, institutional investor	£130,000 – £190,000 base + MIP/carry
CPO — Series A / early scale-up	50–150 employees, first people exec hire	£100,000 – £140,000 base + equity
CPO — established technology business	500+ employees, mature product company	£150,000 – £250,000+ base
Fractional CPO — retained	Seed–Series B, 20–150 employees	£4,000 – £12,000 per month
Interim CPO — transformation or cover	Culture change, departure cover, M&A integration	£750 – £1,400 per day

Base salary figures exclude annual bonus (typically 20–40% of base at CPO level), equity or options packages, pension and benefits. In VC-backed businesses, equity is frequently the most significant component of CPO compensation — options representing 0.1–0.5% of fully diluted equity are not uncommon at CPO level in pre-IPO technology businesses. In PE-backed businesses, management incentive plan (MIP) participation is standard. Exec Capital can advise on current market benchmarks for both base and equity compensation when briefed on your specific situation.

“We needed a Chief People Officer who could own the culture agenda, manage a complex restructuring, and build the people function we needed for our next phase of growth — all at the same time. Most CPO candidates have experience of one of these things, not all three simultaneously. Exec Capital specifically identified candidates who had managed comparable complexity and placed a CPO within eleven weeks who delivered on all three objectives. The restructuring was managed with a care and professionalism that protected our employer brand throughout.”

CEO — UK Scale-up Business

When Do Technology Businesses Need to Recruit a CPO?

Scaling Past 50–100 Employees

The critical inflection point for most technology businesses is somewhere between 50 and 100 employees. Below this threshold, the CEO or COO can typically manage the people agenda alongside their other responsibilities, with support from an HR Manager or People Manager. Beyond it, the volume and complexity of hiring, the importance of culture consistency across a growing team, the challenge of retaining key talent in a competitive market, and the need for people infrastructure that scales without breaking all exceed what a generalist leader can manage effectively. The first CPO appointment is often the difference between a business that scales its culture alongside its headcount and one that finds itself at 200 people wondering why things feel different from when it was at 30.

Series B and Series C Fundraising

Venture capital investors at Series B and beyond consistently include people and culture in their due diligence. They want to understand the quality of the leadership team, the employer brand and talent acquisition capability, the retention metrics for key engineering and product talent, and whether the business has the people infrastructure to support the headcount growth the investment will fund. A credible CPO — either already in post or identified as an early hire post-investment — materially strengthens the investment narrative. Many VCs now include CPO recruitment as a priority action in their first hundred days post-investment.

Engineering and Product Talent Crisis

Technology businesses that are losing engineers to competitors, struggling to fill senior product roles, or watching their Glassdoor rating deteriorate typically have a CPO-shaped gap in their leadership. The CPO who can diagnose the root cause of talent attrition — whether it is compensation, leadership quality, technical environment, career progression or culture — and build the programmatic response is delivering commercial value that dwarfs their salary cost. According to research from the CIPD’s Labour Market Outlook, technology roles consistently top the list of hardest-to-fill positions in the UK — making CPO-level people leadership a direct competitive advantage in the engineering talent market.

Remote and Distributed Workforce Management

Technology businesses that operate with fully distributed or heavily remote teams face people leadership challenges that are qualitatively different from co-located organisations — maintaining culture cohesion across time zones, designing equitable performance frameworks for remote teams, building the social infrastructure that enables collaboration without physical proximity, and managing the individual wellbeing implications of isolated working. A CPO who has built and led people programmes for distributed technology workforces brings specific expertise that is increasingly difficult to find and disproportionately valuable in businesses whose growth is not constrained by geography.

Cultural Transformation Post-Funding or Post-Acquisition

Major inflection points — a significant new funding round, a first institutional investor, an acquisition, a rapid headcount doubling — all create cultural risk. The startup culture that made a business successful at 30 people can become a liability at 200 if nobody has deliberately designed the transition. A CPO who has navigated this transition before — who understands how to preserve what made the culture distinctive while adding the structure and scalability that growth requires — is among the most valuable hires a CEO can make at this stage. See also our COO recruitment practice, which often works in partnership with the CPO on operational scaling programmes.

IPO and Pre-Exit Preparation

Businesses preparing for an IPO, a trade sale or a secondary PE transaction need to demonstrate institutional-grade people leadership to sophisticated investors and acquirers. This includes a credible CPO who can represent the business’s talent strategy, culture risk management, succession planning and leadership development to due diligence teams. A CPO with listed company or institutional investor experience in people governance significantly de-risks the pre-exit period and can materially improve the business’s valuation by reducing the people-related risk factors that depress multiples.

Departure of an Existing CPO

The loss of a CPO in a scaling technology business creates immediate risk — to talent acquisition pipelines, to ongoing culture initiatives, to key employee relationships, and to the board’s confidence in the people agenda. An interim CPO can provide continuity of leadership within one to two weeks while a permanent search proceeds. Exec Capital runs permanent and interim searches in parallel where the business cannot afford a gap in senior people leadership.

What a Chief People Officer Does

Culture Architecture and Employer Brand

Defining and building the culture of the business — not as a values exercise but as a competitive strategy. The CPO determines what the company stands for as an employer, how that is communicated in the market, and how it is designed into every touchpoint of the employee experience from the first recruiter call through to exit interview. In technology businesses, culture and employer brand are often the primary differentiator in the engineering talent market — a CPO who can make the business the destination of choice for the talent it needs is creating direct commercial value. The Equality Act 2010 framework and the business’s diversity commitments are embedded in this culture architecture, not treated as separate compliance exercises.

Talent Acquisition and Recruitment Strategy

Owning the talent acquisition function at a strategic level — building the end-to-end hiring capability that allows the business to scale headcount without sacrificing quality or culture fit. In technology businesses, this typically means building highly efficient engineering recruiting operations, designing technical assessment frameworks that go beyond whiteboard coding, managing relationships with specialist executive search partners, and ensuring the interview experience reinforces the employer brand rather than undermining it. The CPO also leads C-suite hiring processes — providing the CEO and board with independent assessment of executive candidates and ensuring rigour in the most consequential recruitment decisions the business makes.

Organisational Design and Scaling

Designing the organisational structure that allows the business to scale without losing the agility that made it successful. This includes defining team structures, reporting lines, spans of control, decision-making frameworks and the governance mechanisms that provide accountability without bureaucracy. The CPO works with the CEO and COO on the structural choices that determine how the business will operate at 2x and 5x its current size — building the architecture now rather than trying to retrofit it when the business is already operating under strain. Research from McKinsey’s People & Organizational Performance practice consistently identifies organisational design as one of the highest-value contributions a senior people leader makes to business performance.

Leadership Development and Succession

Building the next generation of leaders from within the business — identifying high-potential individuals, designing development programmes that accelerate their growth, and ensuring the business has internal candidates ready for senior roles rather than perpetually hiring externally. In fast-scaling technology businesses, the CPO’s leadership development work is particularly critical because the management layer — the engineering managers, product leads and team leads who were individual contributors twelve months ago — often has no management experience and significant potential to either enable or block the business’s performance. The CPO who invests in this layer systematically is building a competitive advantage that compounds over time.

Total Reward and Equity Strategy

Designing the total reward framework — base salary, bonus, equity and benefits — that attracts and retains the specific talent profiles the business needs. In technology businesses, equity design is often the CPO’s most commercially impactful people responsibility. A well-designed employee share option scheme (EMI scheme for qualifying UK companies is administered under HMRC’s Enterprise Management Incentive framework) creates long-term retention incentives that align employee and investor interests. The CPO works with the CFO on the total cost of compensation, with the board on the equity pool allocation, and with the CEO on the individual packages required to retain business-critical talent.

People Analytics and Data-Driven Decision Making

Using data to understand and improve every dimension of the people agenda — from time-to-hire and offer acceptance rates in talent acquisition, to engagement scores and flight risk indicators in retention, to performance distribution analysis and promotion rate equity. The most effective CPOs in technology businesses bring the same analytical rigour to people decisions that the CFO brings to financial decisions and the CPO of the product function brings to product decisions. This requires investment in HR technology — HRIS, performance management platforms, people analytics tools — and the capability to turn data into insight that the CEO and board can act on. UK GDPR obligations relating to employee data sit within the CPO’s governance responsibilities.

Employee Experience and Wellbeing

Designing the end-to-end employee experience — every touchpoint from offer letter to exit — as a deliberate product, not an accident. The CPO in a technology business often thinks about the employee experience with the same product discipline applied to customer experience: mapping the journey, identifying friction points, building feedback loops, and iterating based on data. This includes the physical and virtual work environment, the onboarding programme, the performance and development cycle, the wellbeing and mental health support infrastructure, and the social and community experience that makes people want to stay. The ACAS guidance on hybrid and remote working provides the legal framework within which much of this experience design operates.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Leading the DE&I agenda with commercial rigour — building diverse hiring pipelines, ensuring pay equity, creating inclusive promotion and recognition processes, and measuring progress against meaningful targets rather than vanity metrics. Technology businesses face a well-documented diversity challenge — the engineering talent pipeline is demographically narrow and the industry’s hiring practices have historically amplified rather than corrected that narrowness. A CPO who can build genuinely diverse engineering and product teams, and create the inclusive culture that retains diverse talent once hired, is both doing the right thing and building a larger, higher-quality talent pool than competitors who are fishing in the same narrow pond. Legal obligations under the Equality Act 2010 set the floor; effective CPOs build well above it.

Permanent, Interim and Fractional CPO Recruitment

Permanent CPO Executive Search

Exec Capital’s permanent CPO executive search process typically runs from brief to offer accepted in six to nine weeks for most technology company mandates. We access both active and passive candidates — the most effective CPOs at growth-stage businesses are rarely actively looking — through our network and direct approach. We assess beyond people credentials to evaluate commercial acumen in a technology context, culture-building track record, board communication capability, and the specific experience most relevant to the business’s stage and challenges. Every candidate is personally interviewed by our senior team before introduction. We provide a written candidate briefing to the hiring CEO before first meetings, ensuring the interview process focuses on chemistry and decision-making rather than background verification.

Interim CPO Recruitment

Interim CPOs are deployed when a business needs senior people leadership immediately — covering an unexpected departure, leading a specific people transformation programme, managing a complex culture change initiative, supporting a fundraising or M&A process from the people side, or providing continuity while a permanent search proceeds. Our interim CPO network includes individuals with direct experience of scaling technology businesses, distributed team management, PE-backed people programmes, and the specific culture and talent challenges that define fast-growth environments. Most are available within one to two weeks of instruction.

Fractional CPO — Part-Time People Leadership for Scale-Ups

A fractional CPO is the right model for many early-stage and mid-stage technology businesses. Working one to three days per week, a fractional CPO can build the people infrastructure, own the culture agenda, lead senior hiring, provide the board with meaningful people KPIs, and develop the internal team — all without the cost and equity dilution of a full-time C-suite hire at a stage where the business cannot yet fully utilise a full-time CPO. The fractional model is particularly well-suited to Seed and Series A businesses that have closed a round and know people leadership is now a priority, but are not yet at the headcount or complexity level that justifies a full-time appointment. Exec Capital places fractional CPOs extensively across the scale-up market and can advise on the right time commitment for your specific stage and people challenges.

CPO Recruitment — Sectors and Business Stages

Sector / Stage	Key People Leadership Priorities
SaaS and software businesses	Engineering talent acquisition, technical career ladders, ARR-linked headcount planning, remote-first culture
Fintech and insurtech	Regulatory culture, FCA-adjacent talent, dual speed (compliance + innovation), diverse hiring pipelines
Series A / Series B scale-ups	First people infrastructure build, culture design, rapid hiring at quality, founder-team culture transition
PE-backed technology businesses	Value creation plan people workstream, MIP design, management capability acceleration, exit preparation
Marketplace and e-commerce platforms	Mixed workforce complexity (tech + ops), seasonal hiring, gig economy adjacent, brand-as-employer
Healthcare technology and digital health	Clinical + tech hybrid teams, NHS partnership culture, DSPT-adjacent data governance, mission-driven talent
Deep tech, AI and data businesses	Research scientist talent, academia-to-industry pipeline, IP culture, international talent mobility

Recent CPO Placements

Series C SaaS business — Permanent CPO

A Series C SaaS business with 250 employees and a distributed team across three countries required its first dedicated CPO. The previous people function had been led by a People Manager reporting to the COO — adequate at 80 employees, insufficient at 250 with a further 150 hires planned within twelve months. Exec Capital placed a CPO with direct experience of scaling distributed technology teams, appointed within eight weeks. Within six months, engineering time-to-hire had decreased by 40%, attrition in the engineering function had reduced from 22% to 14%, and the business had its first structured performance calibration process.

Fintech scale-up — Fractional CPO (Series A to Series B)

A fintech business that had closed its Series A and was preparing for a Series B round in eighteen months engaged a fractional CPO working two days per week. The brief focused on three priorities: building the people infrastructure required by institutional investors in due diligence, improving retention in the engineering team ahead of the fundraising, and designing the management development programme for a team of first-time engineering managers. Exec Capital placed a fractional CPO with fintech and VC-backed experience. The engagement ran for fourteen months and concluded with the Series B closing — the investor’s due diligence report cited the people infrastructure as a strength rather than a risk.

PE-backed technology business — Interim CPO

A PE-backed technology business required an interim CPO following the departure of its incumbent people leader mid-way through a significant culture transformation programme. The CEO needed someone who could take over the programme immediately, maintain momentum with the senior leadership team, and provide continuity for the 400 employees who were mid-process. Exec Capital placed an interim CPO within nine days. The interim completed the culture programme, managed the board reporting on people KPIs through two quarterly investor reviews, and supported the transition to a permanent appointment eight months later.

AI and data company — First CPO appointment

A fast-growing AI business with 120 employees — predominantly research scientists and ML engineers — made its first dedicated CPO appointment following a period of management team instability that had created retention risk in the technical team. The CEO needed a CPO who understood the specific culture of research-heavy technical organisations and could build people processes that attracted and retained talent from both academic and industry backgrounds. Exec Capital sourced three candidates with directly relevant experience of research-driven technology businesses, supporting the selection process through to offer and acceptance within seven weeks.

Professional Standards and Governance Framework

Chief People Officer appointments operate within a well-developed professional and governance framework. The key standards and bodies Exec Capital references in assessing CPO candidate quality and the governance expectations of the businesses we work with include:

CIPD Profession Map The definitive professional framework for people leaders in the UK — the basis for Chartered MCIPD and FCIPD status HMRC EMI Share Schemes Enterprise Management Incentive scheme framework — the primary equity incentive tool managed by CPOs in qualifying UK technology businesses Equality Act 2010 UK employment equality law across all nine protected characteristics — the CPO’s core compliance framework for hiring, pay, promotion and culture ICO — UK GDPR: Employee Data Data protection obligations in employment — HR systems, employee records, and lawful processing of personal data in a people function ACAS Employment Relations Authoritative guidance on discipline, grievance, remote working and employment best practice — the CPO’s operational legal framework Gender Pay Gap Reporting Mandatory reporting requirements for businesses with 250+ employees — the CPO’s accountability for gender pay equity analysis and remediation

Discuss Your CPO Recruitment Requirement

Whether you need a permanent Chief People Officer, an interim people leader for a scaling business, or a fractional CPO for a Series A or B company, Exec Capital can provide a curated shortlist within 3–7 working days.

3–7 Working days to shortlist

1–2 weeks Interim CPO start time

Since 2018 C-suite specialists

Call 020 3834 9616 Tell us about your hire

Frequently Asked Questions — CPO Recruitment

What is the difference between a CPO and a CHRO?

Chief People Officer and Chief Human Resources Officer describe the same scope of C-suite accountability — full responsibility for the people and culture agenda of the business. The difference is primarily one of context and framing. CPO is the designation preferred in technology companies, scale-ups and businesses where culture, employer brand and talent velocity are the defining people challenges. CHRO is more common in financial services, professional services, listed businesses and large corporates where the emphasis is on governance, regulatory compliance and structured HR process. Exec Capital recruits both profiles: see our CHRO recruitment page for the corporate equivalent.

When should a technology business make its first CPO hire?

The right time varies by business, but the most common triggers are: passing 50–80 employees; closing a Series A or Series B and knowing significant hiring is planned; experiencing meaningful attrition or hiring failures in the engineering team; or recognising that the culture the business wants to build is no longer happening automatically. Many founders delay this hire too long — managing people matters themselves well past the point where they have the time or expertise to do it well. The most effective CPO hires we see happen slightly before the inflection point rather than in response to a problem.

How does a fractional CPO work in practice?

A fractional CPO works with your business on an agreed number of days per week — typically one to three — as an embedded member of your leadership team rather than an external consultant. They attend leadership meetings, lead people team activity, build the people infrastructure, manage senior hiring, and represent the business on people matters to investors and the board on their committed days. Between those days, they are reachable for urgent matters by email and phone. The model works best when there is a capable People Manager or HR Business Partner handling day-to-day operational HR. The fractional CPO provides the strategic layer that makes the whole function more effective, not a replacement for operational HR capability.

What equity should a CPO expect at a growth-stage technology business?

CPO equity expectations vary significantly by stage and business, but the following benchmarks reflect typical market rates for UK technology businesses in 2026. At Series A, a CPO typically receives 0.25–0.5% of fully diluted equity via options. At Series B, 0.15–0.3% is more common as the cap table becomes more diluted. At Series C and beyond, 0.05–0.15% is typical. In PE-backed businesses, Management Incentive Plan (MIP) participation is standard — the CPO typically participates in the same structure as other ExCo members. These are indicative figures and actual allocations depend on the individual’s experience, the business’s growth trajectory, and the existing cap table structure. We advise both businesses and candidates on equity benchmarks as part of our search process.

What background does a technology CPO typically come from?

The most effective CPOs in technology businesses typically come from one of three backgrounds: experienced HR Business Partners or People Directors who have worked in fast-growth technology environments and built upward into the CPO role; former HR Directors or CHROs from corporate backgrounds who have made the move into technology and developed the culture-first, product-thinking approach the role requires; or, less commonly, ex-COOs or business leaders who have pivoted into people leadership. Chartered MCIPD membership from the CIPD is common but not universal — in technology businesses, a track record of measurable people outcomes in relevant environments carries more weight than credentials.

How long does a permanent CPO search take?

Exec Capital typically delivers a CPO shortlist within 3–7 working days of a confirmed brief. From shortlist to offer accepted, most searches run six to nine weeks, depending on interview process design and negotiation complexity. Technology CPOs — particularly those in successful scale-ups — can have multiple options in the market simultaneously. Speed of decision-making at the shortlist stage is the single biggest factor within the business’s control. We advise clients on structuring an interview process that is rigorous enough to make a confident decision without being so slow that the best candidates accept alternatives before reaching offer stage.

CPO Recruitment