From a Chief People Officer Brief to a Chief Operating Officer: Placing a Leader Whose Scope Outgrew the Job Title

The Challenge

In 2023, this European vacation rental software company closed a $175 million growth round from a growth equity investor, one of the largest investments its market segment had seen. At the time, the company had grown to more than 160 employees spread across 40+ countries, operating remotely from day one.

Funding on that scale changes what a company needs from its leadership. The founding team had been running people operations themselves as an extension of building the product and the business. That works at a smaller scale. It gets harder to sustain once a company is trying to professionalise its people function across dozens of countries with no central office.

The company needed someone to build a real people function for its next stage of growth, ideally someone who understood how to operate inside a fully remote, globally distributed team, not just manage HR policy from a headquarters.

They turned to The Big Search.

Overview of the executive search

• Growth equity-backed vacation rental software platform, Europe
• One executive hire
• August 2023 → October 2023
• Growth Equity Value Creation: Operational Infrastructure Phase

Three months after closing its growth round, in August 2023, the company retained The Big Search to find a Chief People Officer. We closed the search in just under three months. The hire was made, but the role's scope expanded during the process: the person placed took on a Chief Operating Officer remit rather than a narrower people-only mandate.

Executive Search Across Remote-First, High-Growth SaaS Operations Leadership

We targeted operators who had built people or business operations infrastructure inside a bootstrapped or VC-backed SaaS company during a period of significant revenue growth in a fully remote setting. This isn't the traditional CPO talent pool, and that was deliberate.

Criteria we screened against:

• A track record building people or operations infrastructure through a period of significant revenue growth
• Direct experience operating inside a 100% remote team spread across dozens of countries
• Comfort owning a broad operational remit rather than a narrow HR or benefits function
• Exposure to company-scale change (growth, restructuring, or exit events)
• No relocation requirement; genuine fit with a fully distributed working model
• Cultural fit for a fast-moving, founder-led environment

We mapped 73 candidates against this profile.

First shortlist

19 days from kick-off

Of the 73, 29 were approached directly, 28 responded, and all 28 went through a consultant interview. Twenty-six of them expressed genuine interest: a 97% response rate and a 90% interest rate against an otherwise hard-to-reach pool. Fifteen made the shortlist, and 9 met the client directly before an offer was made. The funnel shape tells its own story: strong response and interest at the top, but a wide gap between people who engaged and the small group who actually matched the brief. This wasn't an outreach problem. Operators who have genuinely built people, finance, or operations infrastructure from near-zero inside a fully remote company are rare, and the client held a high bar for who reached the final stage.

The Placed Candidate: An Operator Who Had Already Scaled a Remote Team From the Ground Up

They joined the process with roughly 8 years at one company, starting as VP of Operations and rising to Chief Operating Officer at a fully remote, bootstrapped SaaS company. Over that period, the company grew headcount from around 14 to more than 400 people across 45+ countries, with revenue growing roughly 20x during their tenure. The company was later acquired by a larger enterprise analytics company. Before that role, they spent over a decade in product and IT roles in the insurance sector.

They had never held a title with "people" in it before this search. At their previous company, people operations sat inside their broader COO remit for most of their tenure rather than as a standalone function. That background mapped directly onto what the client needed: the role that was created went beyond a traditional people-leadership mandate into a broader operating remit.

• Remote-native at scale — helped grow a fully remote team from roughly 14 to 400+ people across 45+ countries, the exact operating model the client was scaling into.
• Proven growth conditions — operated through a period of roughly 20x revenue growth, giving them lived experience of a comparable growth curve.
• Operations-first background — came from a COO seat where people operations was one part of a wider mandate, a close match for how the role evolved during the search.
• Exit experience — was inside the business through its acquisition by a larger analytics company, relevant given the client's own growth and M&A trajectory following its raise.
• Cultural match — years operating in a fully remote, globally distributed team gave them instant credibility with a founder-led, distributed organisation.

A people-leadership brief doesn't always stay a people-leadership job once the right person is in the room. We closed this search in about 3 months, from kickoff to placement, and delivered a leader whose remit expanded to cover operations more broadly, at a company that had just closed a nine-figure growth round.

The strongest people leaders for fast-scaling remote companies don't always come from a traditional HR career path. Some come from operators who happened to own the people function as one part of a larger operational mandate, and who can prove it with real numbers from a company that already made that climb.

If your next people hire needs to be an operator first and an HR specialist second, let's talk.