HR People M&A Lead
Payward, Inc. is the parent company and operating platform behind Kraken and a portfolio spanning trading, custody, payments, lending, tokenized assets, onchain finance, and benchmarks.
Funding history
Investors
Projects
About Payward, Inc.
Payward operates unified financial infrastructure across crypto and traditional markets, including shared liquidity, risk and margin systems, collateral and settlement, compliance, and licensing. Its first-party portfolio includes Kraken, Kraken Pro, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services, CF Benchmarks, Reap, Krak, Kraken Prime, Kraken OTC, Kraken Custody, and Bitnomial.
Skills
Candidate Availability
Required and preferred rules are kept separate and reflect the wording in the original posting.
About the Role
You will own the people workstream for acquisitions from initial diligence through closing and integration. You will review employment, organization, compensation, equity, policy, and claims data; identify material risks; model deal mechanics; advise senior stakeholders; and build reusable diligence and integration playbooks.
Requirements
- 8+ years of experience in M&A people or HR diligence, integration, total rewards, or corporate development
- Hands-on ownership of the people workstream on completed deals
- Experience managing multiple diligence processes against hard timelines
- Ability to model compensation, equity, dilution, retention cost, and integration spend
- Global or cross-border deal experience involving multiple jurisdictions or change-of-control employment considerations
- Experience using AI and automation to review large document volumes
- Ability to communicate risk decisions to executive stakeholders
- Experience negotiating compensation, equity, and retention structures with founders
- Ability to handle confidential, undisclosed transactions
Responsibilities
- Own the people workstream for M&A activity from diligence through integration
- Build and manage people due-diligence questionnaires, data requests, and follow-up workshops
- Review employment, organization, compensation, equity, policy, and claims data using AI and automation
- Assess findings against risk tolerance and make clear recommendations
- Model compensation, equity, retention, earn-out, and integration costs
- Support organization design, leveling, compensation harmonization, retention, and Day 1 readiness
- Create reusable playbooks, templates, risk scoring, and automation
Benefits
- Bonus program
- Equity program
- Wellness allowance
- Medical insurance
- Dental insurance
- Vision insurance
- 401(k)
