People Experience Lead (Senior Manager)
Acorn
Are you a strategic People leader who thrives on shaping culture, enabling performance, and partnering with senior leaders to drive business impact? We’d love to hear from you!
About Acorn PLMS
At Acorn PLMS, we are on a mission to transform the corporate learning experience. Our cutting-edge Performance Learning Management System (PLMS) software is powered by AI and designed to ensure that what people learn directly contributes to their exceptional performance in business. Corporate performance and learning needs a revolution, and Acorn PLMS is the antidote. We are the only solution that guides learners step by step to master the specific capabilities required for their roles, ultimately accelerating organisational performance.
Location
We are open to individuals based in Sydney or Canberra, Australia – this is an in-office role.
Role overview
This role is for a senior People leader accountable for owning and delivering Acorn’s People strategy in partnership with the Director of Operations & People. This role leads the People Experience function, manages team members, and drives strategic initiatives that enable performance, growth, and engagement across the business.
The People Experience Lead demonstrates strong leadership presence and is recognised as a trusted specialist in their space. They confidently represent the People function, partner with senior stakeholders, and translate business priorities into scalable people strategies and programs that support Acorn’s continued growth.
5 Key Capabilities for this role
The best part… we use our Acorn software at Acorn. We believe in the power of our Managers and Employees being aligned on the 5 capabilities needed for each role, and the level that we expect for any given role, using our Acorn AI tool to streamline this consistently across our business. The 5 levels comprise Foundational, Developing, Proficient, Advanced and Expert.
Here are the 5 key capabilities for the role and the level expected to give you an idea of what the role entails:
- Talent Acquisition: Oversee our Talent Acquisition Manager to plan and deliver recruitment to secure timely, high-quality hires that meet workforce demand, capability needs, and compliance requirements, enabling sustainable business delivery and growth. Level: Developing – At the developing stage, you manage recruitment for defined roles working with our Talent Acquisition Manager. You partner with managers on role clarity, run hiring processes, monitor pipeline health, and adjust tactics to meet agreed timelines.
- Change Leadership & Culture: Lead organisation-wide people change and shape culture to align behaviours with strategy and drive lasting adoption. Level – Proficient: At the proficient stage, you lead people change programmes. You align leaders, manage risks, and use data to drive adoption and cultural outcomes.
- Performance & Capability Strategy: Set performance and capability standards and priorities to build a high-performing workforce and strong succession. Level – Proficient: At the proficient stage, you lead performance and capability strategy. You set standards, run fair reviews, and use data to build successors and lift performance.
- People Experience, Change & Culture: Design and lead people experience and change to align culture and behaviours with strategy, driving engagement, wellbeing, and sustained adoption across the organisation. Level – Proficient: At the proficient stage, you lead experience and change outcomes. You design initiatives, align leaders, use data to drive adoption, and improve engagement and wellbeing.
- People Data, Governance & Insight: Establish trusted people data, metrics, and decision standards to turn insight into action and manage workforce risk. Level: Developing: At the developing stage, you use people data to guide decisions. You improve data quality, interpret trends, and focus actions.
Key responsibilities
People Strategy & Leadership
- Co-design Acorn’s People Strategy with the Director of Operations & People and own execution of the People roadmap
- Accountable for delivery of People team KPIs, including hiring performance, engagement, and internal capability development
- Demonstrate strong leadership presence and be recognised as a trusted specialist in the People space
- Own strategic People messaging with confidence, clearly articulating priorities, decisions, and trade-offs to senior stakeholders
- Understand and articulate the broader strategic impact of People initiatives on key ELT-level metrics, including performance, engagement, retention, capability, and growth
Senior Stakeholder Partnership
- Act as the senior People partner to VPs and Directors, owning complex, high-impact people conversations
- Translate business strategy into scalable people solutions and programs
Team Leadership
- Directly manage and develop the Talent Acquisition Manager and other People team members as the function scales
- Set clear priorities, ways of working, and quality standards for the People Experience team
Strategic Initiatives
- Own end-to-end delivery of strategic People initiatives, such as the internal rollout and adoption of Acorn for Acorn!
- Design and execute targeted capability and training programs for key teams including Engineering and Sales
- Lead cross-functional initiatives that connect People strategy to measurable business outcomes
Governance & Excellence
- Ensure people operations, policies, and practices are scalable, compliant, and aligned to best practice
Required Experience
- Advanced capability in people strategy, stakeholder leadership, and program design
- Proven experience owning and delivering people strategies in a scaling SaaS or technology environment
- Strong people leadership capability, including direct management and coaching
- Confidence leading senior, complex conversations with executives and functional leaders
- Experience delivering large-scale, cross-functional people initiatives end to end
- Strong commercial and operational mindset, linking People outcomes to business impact
Compensation
One of our core values is transparency and we believe in being upfront with candidates throughout the recruitment process, to make sure expectations are aligned.
This role sits within a salary range of $137,000 - $170,000 + 12% superannuation contribution, commensurate with experience and qualifications.
Why join Acorn PLMS?
- Play a key leadership role shaping the people strategy of a high-growth global SaaS company
- Work directly with senior leaders to influence culture, capability, and organisational performance
- Lead impactful initiatives that connect learning, performance, and business outcomes
- Be part of a values-driven company building a product we genuinely use ourselves
Location
We are open to individuals based in Sydney or Canberra, Australia. We are an office-first company, meaning we work from our local offices the majority (if not all) of the time. We want to create cool stuff with great people, and we know from experience that is best done through daily moments like the coffee run, walk to grab lunch, or quick huddles.
Being able to capitalise on this is key to our ongoing success and a large part of the reason we can work at the pace we do. Please note candidates will need to be in commuting distance to our offices based in Sydney or Canberra CBD. Applicants must have full working rights in Australia to be considered for this role.
Our recruitment process
Acorn is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace where everyone feels valued and respected. We are an equal opportunities employer and welcome applications from all qualified candidates. We aim to ensure that our recruitment process is fair and accessible to everyone and encourage candidates to request any accommodations needed during the application or interview stages.
About Acorn
Acorn is the hub for learning and performance for over 3 million active learners globally. The work you do — whether that’s writing lines of code, designing the layout of a dashboard, or talking to customers — helps real people grow not just professionally, but personally. In the space of 10 years, we’ve grown to a global platform in the heart of many major organisations’ ecosystems.
There’s still so much more to do, and we need people who are keen to help us journey into the next phase on board! And since we’re still growing, there’s so much you can learn on that journey with us. To find out more about life at Acorn, our Values and working with us, check out our website at https://acorn.works and see our Life At Acorn video here! https://youtu.be/2BGUk-n3FrQ?si=U_sS1Y5ZSP0tNtZW