About This Role

Dark Matter Labs in recent years has evolved with the work from a close-knit team of 20 members to a collaborative global team of around 70 members. With growth comes transformation. We're adapting and evolving our internal processes and structure to ensure that as the work spreads, the essence of who we are remains undiluted and every team member feels valued and empowered.

In April of 2025 we launched a new structure and way of working within our People Circle. The circle is populated by three People Hosts, each of whom holds the end to end people journey for a third of our team (20-25 people each). They are responsible for key milestones, annual rhythms and reactionary work that naturally emerges through the ebbs and flows of life and interactions between our time in the workplace and out of the workplace. Elements of the hosting role include navigating pay structures, learning and growth cycles, contracting, on- and offboarding, role agreements and preparing for and returning from absence. We aim to give every new team member a warm introduction to our unique way of working, characterized by integrity, self-management, and interdependence. And as our members transition out, we wish to part ways with the same warmth and care with which we welcomed them.

We're looking for someone who can provide rigour, stability, intuition and care to the team through on-time, diligent and consistent execution of core processes. Harmonising this rigour with empathy, personal expansion and growth, as well as a deeply grounded sensitivity to interpersonal and systemic dynamics. As our team continues to grow, we would love to welcome someone into this role who has passion for and experience in nurturing shared, embodied leadership in a remote environment. You would be joining DML in a moment of gradual evolution as our project teams extend their reach beyond thought leaders, into builders and connectors. As we lean into this shift, and the state of the world around us continues to evolve rapidly, we are seeking someone who brings creativity to cohesion and confidence to visioning who we need to be as we grow into who we’re becoming. 

Be one of three People Hosts, personally dedicated to 20-25 DML citizens — the first point of contact for their people journey. 

• Facilitate core journey milestones: onboarding, role alignment workshops, learning and growth conversations and contract reviews. Capture and follow up on actions resulting from these moments to weave together the threads of the people journey.

• Champion embodied leadership through a coaches approach to supporting hostees and modelling DML’s How We Work principles: Always Be Learning, Work Outloud, Be Propositional, Deep Care and Grit, Embrace Brilliance.

• Balance being a friend, collaborator, coach and support to your hostees. Navigating their journeys with care and diligence whether through moments of consistency, or periods of change.

• Collaborate with Finance, and Project Journey to ensure accurate contract and FTE (time capacity) management. Supporting with spotting funding gaps & finding aligned project opportunities for hostees with upcoming project changes. 

• Be a responsive point of contact for the team for questions relating to people policies, processes, data or otherwise; ensure that the shared Notion portal has up to date and accurate information relating to people processes and operations.

• Steward timely and compassionate decision-making to ensure a caring contract renewal or mutual trial period process. 

Be the People Circle connector to Mission Pathways, Health Keepers and other relevant strategic and governance related circles and spaces.  

• Attend bi-weekly Health Keepers meetings as the People Circle representative. Providing updates from the People Circle in relation to decision making challenges or governance gaps. Contribute to follow up as needed.

• Hold and coordinate adaptable people and talent strategies and governance in harmony with DML’s overarching strategy and needs of the work/team/mission.

Be in collaboration with fellow People Hosts to ensure all People processes are serving our team as best they can.

• Source directly and through personal evaluation feedback on our current people processes and the overall experience of the DML People Journey. Channel feedback into considerate design changes and additions. 

• Identify gaps in the people journey or opportunities for either personalisation or templating, and make proactive propositions and improvements.

• Ensure people journey processes are cleanly documented, kept up to date and socialised.

Be the orchestrator of new hires at DML, coordinating candidates, Mission Holders, project teams and Entity Holders to ensure a warm, considered and meaningful hiring experience.

• Support hiring teams to articulate role needs, draft role descriptions, determine starting assets and prepare sift and interview guides.

• Coordinate application reviews, interview scheduling and in some instances participate in interviews. 

• Welcome conversations around contract options and understanding pay conversations with new candidates — exploring their needs and sharing the foundations of DML’s approach to pay and mutual contractual relationships. Noting that these conversations can include navigating specific visa requirements. 

• Hold clear, vibrant and caring communication with candidates ensuring they experience a transparent and well managed hiring journey from start to finish. You will hold the communication and be the point of contact until the contract is issued at which point you will pass the new hire to their People Host for onboarding. 

• Alongside Mission Pathways & Finance, develop a new talent strategy that looks beyond traditional contracts and talent pools to harness exciting new collaborative approaches for DML with our community of external experts. 

We expect that the balance between these areas will regularly shift and rebalance, with an overall split as summarised above. 

You Might Thrive In This Role If...

• Empathy and emotional intelligence guide you. The heart of this work is care, human(e) communication and commitment to exploring what’s possible towards our mission and beyond. You have a high degree of reflexivity, are on a lifelong journey of learning about your self- and co-regulation mechanisms, and love sharing other people’s similar journeys too.

• You're a proactive and holistic problem-solver. Instead of waiting for challenges to escalate, you anticipate them and take initiative to find solutions, whilst being conscious of the impact those may have in a deeply entangled social system. You're passionate about operations and administration and how these done well can unleash a system and team for brilliance. You thrive in the rigour and details of day-to-day processes and want to build your leadership here. 

• You’re keen to get stuck into some gritty governance challenges, bringing a strategic mindset to how we nurture an ever evolving team within an organisational structure still seeking to find its operational sweet spot.

• You feel comfortable and open in uncertainty. You’re skilled at holding ambiguity, navigating nuance and striking the balance between honouring process and making exceptions. 

• Like all of Dm, you're captivated by The Boring Revolution. You see the transformative potential in refining, streamlining, and perfecting the ‘seemingly mundane’ underlying systems of our society (its ‘dark matter’) and are open to transcending the ‘normal’, bending and reinventing along the way. 

• Remote work resonates with you. You thrive in decentralized settings and understand the nuances and challenges of working in a largely remote organization with a global team with various contracting and visa needs. What’s more, you’re passionate about how to find greatness in the remote environment. 

• Tech & Tools - Agile and fluent use of Slack, Miro and Notion.

• Full proficiency in spoken and written English (plural forms of expression and accents are very welcome!).

In Addition to Your Hostees, You Might Work Most Closely With:

• Nasim Forootan. People Journey Host with a focus on culture and learning. 

• Carolina Ribeiro. People Journey Host with a focus on people and finance admin. 

• Melissa Watkins and Indy Johar. Mission Pathways Co-Stewards.

• Anna Rosero. People Circle. (Currently on maternity leave).

• Adam Purvis and JP King. Learning Circle.  

• Jason Brown. Project Journey & Capacity Stewardship. 

• Andrea Fernandes. Finance Circle

• Rob de Jong, Alizé de Buck, Jordan Brown. Local Entity Holders.

How People Journeys work

The People Circle is one of DML’s core operating functions. It collaborates closely with the Finance Circle, Learning Circle, Project Journey Circle, Mission Pathways Circle and Entity Ops to ensure Dark Matter Labs keeps the wheels turning, and keeps pushing the boundaries of how we approach work and employment.

The People Circle

The Circle is made up of the People Hosts, they meet bi-weekly to: 

• Update on ‘people’ news, any movement in the team, role changes etc.;

• Surface any patterns of challenges or experiences that can be solved for through people processes;

• Ensure a consistent approach to hosting people journeys;

• Support one another with navigating complex people or interpersonal cases;

• Update and/or collaborate on people projects & people strategy.

The People Circle orient themselves around these principles: 

• We are here to care for Dm's people assuming everyone’s best intentions.

• We speak about people as if they were in the room.

• We acknowledge and are proactive in researching the whole (the person, the system, the dynamics). We remain objective so we can really hear the experience - we challenge each other’s biases.

• We are responsible for designing and socialising a caring system.

Pay

Our approach to pay has always been a participatory and collective process involving the entire team. Over time, we’ve experimented with different models, and we’ve recently launched our new Base Pay Formula, which is composed of the following elements:

• Geographic living costs

• Starting assets each individual brings into their Dm role upon joining. For this role, we recognise two types:

  • Must-have: Applied technical skills focused on supporting human thriving through embodied leadership

  • Nice-to-have: Professional standard accreditations

• Tenure at Dm

You can estimate your pay using this calculator.

We recognize that no formula can fully reflect the unique context of every individual. That’s why we also have a Pay Rebalancing process in place, reviewed annually, to accommodate individual circumstances.

In addition, we offer Shared Benefits and Leave Budgets, which are added to the gross salary. These were set collectively by the team and vary based on statutory provisions in different geographies. We’ll be happy to confirm the specific approach relevant to your location and contract type.

Our holiday policy includes a minimum of 28 days per year (pro-rata), but we encourage you to take as much time as you need to truly rest and recharge.

Your Hiring Journey at Dark Matter Labs

This page outlines how the process will look if you apply. We recommend checking it, and if you have any questions, please reach out at join@darkmatterlabs.org.

For this role, we do not require a CV, as we aim to focus more on your potential than your past experience. In saying that, we are confident this isn’t an entry level role. Instead, you will be asked to answer four sift questions (250 words max each) related to the role, which will hopefully also help you determine if this role truly interests you. We expect to hold three rounds of interviews for this role with the first round commencing September 8th. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

Thank you for your time and energy!