Vice President Of People

Nabis is the #1 licensed cannabis wholesale platform in the world, supplying $1B+ worth of cannabis products annually from hundreds of brands to retailers across California, New York, and Nevada. Our mission is to empower the world to discover cannabis by providing choice, access, and innovation. Through modern, scalable infrastructure, our mission is to empower the world to discover cannabis by providing choice, access, and innovation.

We’re at the forefront of this movement, building an innovative, technology-first platform to scale the entire cannabis industry. Backed by Y Combinator and investors, including DoorDash Co-Founder Stanley Tang, NFL Hall of Famer Joe Montana, Gmail creator Paul Buchheit, and Twitch co-founder Justin Kan, Nabis is rapidly expanding across the U.S. with the goal of becoming the largest and most influential cannabis distribution network globally.

About the Role

We're hiring a VP People to lead our People function end-to-end. We want a leader who can do that hands-on while also showing up with the executive presence to be a real partner to the President, the operations leadership team, and the rest of the executive bench.

This is a player-coach role in the most literal sense. You will lead a small team and develop them, but you will also be deep in the work yourself: making the hard ER calls, owning the systems, closing critical hires, getting on the warehouse floor, and standing in the room when a manager needs to be coached through a tough conversation. We are not looking for a strategist who delegates execution. We are looking for an operator with the gravitas to lead.

If your instinct is to build a deck before you build the team, this is not your seat. If your instinct is to spend your first month walking the warehouses, sitting with managers, fixing the broken process you find on day three, and then bringing a sharp point of view to the executive team — keep reading.

• →The function and the team. Assess where the People team is today, decide what it needs to become, and build it. Coach the team you keep, hire what's missing, and set the bar for how this function operates inside Nabis.
• →Employee relations across an hourly, multistate workforce. High-volume ER work is the reality of this role. Investigations, performance management, terminations, accommodations, and workers' comp claims — owned with sound independent judgment, and used as the on-ramp to coach our managers into handling more of this themselves over time.
• →Multistate compliance, with California depth. Filings, leave administration, wage and hour, classification, and the state-specific employment law footprint of a CA-heavy operator. Cannabis-industry compliance familiarity (or the appetite to learn it fast) is a plus.
• →Recruiting outcomes across hourly, operations, and corporate roles. You'll set the strategy and you'll be hands-on for critical hires, We don't need a VP People who has only managed TA from a distance.
• →Warehouse and operations partnership. Build a real working relationship with our warehouse and logistics leaders. Spot people issues before they become incidents. Develop manager capability on the floor. Co-own workplace safety and workers' comp programs alongside ops.
• →Benefits, payroll, and total rewards. Vendor management, open enrollment, payroll operations, and the day-to-day employee experience. With rescheduling reshaping what's possible (401(k), banking, benefits design), you'll have a real opportunity to upgrade what we offer.
• →Systems. HRIS, ATS, and the supporting stack — configuration, reporting, integrations. You can do this work yourself when you need to, and you know when to bring in implementation help versus when to just go.
• →External partners. Brokers, EORs, employment counsel, safety consultants. Manage them like an operator, not a coordinator.
• →Cross-functional people projects. Compensation reviews, policy rollouts, handbook updates, org changes, and post-acquisition integration work. Scope, drive, and land them.

• Months 1–3: Listen, diagnose, and start moving. On the floor in the warehouses. In 1:1s with corporate managers and the exec team. Embedded with the People team you inherit. You leave this stretch with a clear, defensible point of view on what's working, what's not across both sides of the house, and your top three priorities — and you're already executing on the most urgent.
• Months 3–6: Function reshaped, fundamentals tightened. You build the People team to match where the business needs support. ER caseload under control with a real triage model that works for both hourly and corporate populations. A recruiting machine producing across hourly, operations, and corporate roles at the volume the business needs. Compliance posture audited end-to-end and gaps closed.
• Months 6–12: Capability built, voice earned. Manager capability is noticeably stronger across the warehouse network and corporate teams — people leaders are running better 1:1s, handling their own tough conversations, and developing their people. Benefits and total rewards refresh in flight. Systems stack rationalized. You're a trusted voice in the executive room on talent, org design, and people strategy — not just the function leader who shows up when something breaks.

• 12+ years in HR/People roles, with meaningful time inside a logistics, distribution, manufacturing, or similarly operationally heavy company. If your career has been salaried-knowledge-worker companies only, this isn't the right seat.
• Direct experience supporting hourly and warehouse workforces at scale. You know what it means to manage ER volume, workers' comp claims, and high-turnover hourly recruiting — not in theory, but because you've done it.
• Multistate compliance experience, with California depth strongly preferred. Cannabis industry experience is a plus but not required; comfort operating in a complex, fast-changing regulatory environment is required.
• Operator first, strategist second. This role is roughly 70% execution, 30% strategy, and you should want it that way. You build the deck because you've already built the thing.
• Executive presence to match. You can hold the room with the President, push back on the executive team when you need to, and be the senior voice managers and employees turn to in hard moments. Doing the work and showing up as a leader are not in tension for you.
• Builder mindset. You've taken a People function from informal/under-built to mature at least once. You know how to assess what's there, keep what's good, and rebuild what isn't — without breaking the business while you do it.
• Hands-on recruiting chops. You've personally run searches end-to-end at some point. You can still close a candidate yourself when it matters.
• Tech-fluent. You can own HRIS and ATS configuration, reporting, and integrations directly. You don't need IT or a vendor to make the system do what you need it to do.
• Comfortable with high autonomy and ambiguity. You set direction without heavy oversight, and you don't wait for permission to fix what's broken.

*Nabis is seeking to create a diverse work environment because all teams are stronger with different perspectives and life experiences. We strongly encourage women, people of color, LGBTQIA individuals, people with disabilities, members of ethnic minorities, foreign-born residents, older members of society, and others from minority groups and diverse backgrounds to apply. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, religion, color, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. All employees and contractors of Nabis are responsible for maintaining a work culture free from discrimination and harassment by treating others with kindness and respect.*