Performance Ortho is a New Jersey-based, comprehensive orthopedic and outpatient care organization with four clinic locations, an Ambulatory Surgery Center, and corporate headquarters in Bridgewater. Now in our 25th year, we are proud to offer an integrated model of care that includes Orthopedic Surgery, Physical Therapy, Chiropractic, Occupational Therapy, and Acupuncture. We take pride in delivering coordinated, patient-centered care across multiple specialties within modern, well-equipped clinic environments. Our goal remains to transform lives with love, and we are now entering a season of ambitious growth, seeking to serve more residents of New Jersey in our unique multi-disciplinary model.
About the Role
We are looking for an experienced, hands-on Head of People. In this multi-faceted role reporting to the COO, Matthew Brigante, and partnering with the executive team, you’ll ensure People and Talent are a strategic amplifier, not a compliance or service function. You will help a successful 25-year-old business move into a new era of growth, tech-enablement, and creativity. You’ll guide a seasoned Head of Talent who leads recruitment and strategic people operations projects, with operational support from our Operations Analyst. This is a unique opportunity to transform and build an emerging People and Talent function that directly propels the Performance Ortho's growth into the next decade.
What You'll Do
This role is a blend of strategy, hands-on people operations, and partnership on talent acquisition. You will be part of a 2.5 person People + Talent team, and will wear many hats, while collaborating closely with our COO and leaders.
Strategic Leadership (25%)
- Deeply understand the business and service delivery model, financial model, and growth strategy, and spar with the executive team on the best ways to achieve EBITA goals, and growth targets.
- Partner with the executive team to build foundational strategy across People and Talent sub-functions, and the full employee lifecycle.
- Design and deliver best-in-class approaches for scale, with creativity for our unique business and dynamics
People Operations (60%)
- Employee Lifecycle: You’ll design and enhance employee onboarding and offboarding, leave management, time off programs, engagement surveys, and anniversaries.
- Employee Support: You’ll be the first point of contact for employee inquiries (with support from the team), responsible for confidentially and strategically supporting situations from accommodations to special requests, complaints to requests for support.
- Workflows and Technology: You’ll help implement a migration from an outdated PEO to a full HRIS (Rippling) and establishing in-house people operations compliance and support for the first time (self-administered worker’s compensation, compliance, employment practices liability, state paperwork, leave management, reporting). You’ll leverage our new core HRIS platform, while building low-cost and customized workflows and capabilities with AI tooling vs. purchasing features or additional tooling.
- Learning and Credentialing: You’ll manage our LMS, reporting, and compliance relative to mandatory training, credential maintenance, and more. Beyond mandatory training, you’ll design programs that elevate the day-to-day operational practice of our frontline leaders, many of whom are first-time leaders and managers.
- Performance Management and Talent Planning: You’ll establish an approach to performance frameworks, reviews, high-potential identification, and succession and talent planning that is both lightweight and operationally efficient, and high-impact enough to drive business strategy.
- Compensation and Total Rewards: You’ll partner with the Head of Talent to refresh our Compensation benchmarks with market data from PayFactor, and refresh our compensation strategy grounded in Pay for Performance (individual and company) inclusive of market increases, merit increases, incentive plans, and more. You’ll re-design our 2027 approach to Total Rewards, including medical, dental and vision benefits, retirement, and time-off.
- Morale, Engagement and Retention: You’ll conduct biannual surveys, and frequently ‘round’ physically across our facilities to understand employee needs and morale, and pinpoint the changes that help our team affordably do their best work. You’ll design our engagement levers, and monitor attrition risk and design for retention of top performers.
- Compliance: You’ll serve as the expert in state and federal requirements, maintaining an up-to-date handbook and policies, and seasoned judgment on how to handle delicate, high-stakes, or high-risk situations. While you’ll have access to employment counsel, you pride yourself on your deep knowledge and experience, and use counsel minimally.
People and Talent Team Development (15%)
- You will coach and develop our Head of Talent to take on greater responsibility and autonomy on strategic People Operations tasks, including but not limited to performance management, compensation, total rewards, and headcount planning. You’ll serve as a valued thought partner on talent acquisition strategy and operations.
- You will guide our Operations Analyst (30-40% allocation to People), including deploying and optimizing a new HRIS in fall 2026 (Rippling), and building workflows, reports, and custom capabilities. You will also assign and coach them on how to support critical lifecycle work such as onboarding, offboarding, required learning and development, state compliance, and leave management.
What You Bring:
- 15+ years of progressive experience in business operations (strategy, consulting, operations, finance, talent acquisition, HR), with at least 7 years serving as a Senior People and Talent leader (Director or above, with direct reports).
- HR Tech-Savvy: Proficiency with modern HR and recruiting tools. We use Rippling (HRIS), Lovable (custom tooling for scheduling, PTO and reporting), and LinkedIn Recruiter.
- AI Enthusiast: Comfort and excitement about leveraging AI to supercharge your workflow, build automations, and create more efficient processes. You won’t expect to delegate this to the team, or simply purchase off-the-shelf solutions.
- Collaborative Partner: A strong willingness to support a CEO, COO and executive team with clear convictions about culture and working norms, and the drive and organization to bring that vision to life.
- Love of IRL Work: You'll work onsite 4 days per week (1 day WFH). You will help foster a vibrant in-person work culture across our clinics, and our central office, as most of our team works onsite 5 days per week.
What Helps Team Members Thrive at Performance Ortho?
- Hunger to Learn and Raise the Bar. We hire experts in their craft with top credentials, but we know learning never stops - we expect you to bring excellence to the table, and be eager to stay at the cutting edge.
- Intellectual honesty – The right answer matters more than being right. You challenge assumptions, test ideas, and pivot when needed. When you lack the expertise - you seek it across the team, or in your network, ensuring your recommendations are grounded in data and best-practices.
- Adaptability – We’ve been a successful business for 20+ years, but we’re in growth mode and now things change quickly. You find a way to make it work and balance short-term deliverables with long-term goals.
- Extreme ownership of outcomes – You optimize your own time, focus on what matters to deliver quickly, and cut out inefficiencies. You don’t come with obstacles or excuses, but potential solutions, creativity, and a willingness to build what doesn’t exist.
- Collaboration - You stay connected to our business strategy, financial model, multi-site team, our patients, our community and our market. You are an expert integrator able to build relationships and influence others, while making sure all the pieces fit together.
What We Offer
- Competitive salary and bonus
- Strong health, dental, and vision coverage
- 401(k) with a 3% match
- 10 days of PTO, 5 days of sick time
- Annual continuing education funds for credentialed staff toward credential maintenance
Compensation
The base salary range for this role is $160,000 – 180,000. This role is eligible for a 20% performance bonus, based on both individual performance and company financial performance.
Our compensation ranges are set based on market data for firms of similar size, industry and financial performance. Offers are based on a candidate’s demonstrated experience, expertise, and their performance in our interview process, with consideration for internal pay equity. It is rare for a new hire to enter at the top of the compensation range.
