Director of HR

The AML Story

We’ve come a long way. AML has 52 years of experience designing and building oceanographic instrumentation and we have clocked consistent year‑on‑year growth of greater than 15%. We have customers on all seven continents. We have a 70+ person team of employees that care deeply about customer outcomes. In our market, we are known for two things: 1) Going to the ends of the earth to make our customers successful; and 2) Bringing fresh ideas to an established market.

Earlier this year, we were acquired by Union Park Capital. Our mission? To drive the success of Union Park’s marine technology thesis. AML is the operating foundation of that thesis, and our focus is on growing the core business while carefully extending our solution set via acquisition. We anticipate dramatic growth and significant change in the next 3 to 5 years.

How we Operate

At AML, we do things a bit differently. Think daily huddles. Think Rockefeller Habits, Scaling Up, and the One Page Plan. Think town hall meetings with on‑the‑fly Q&A sessions. If you are familiar with these concepts - or they are of interest to you - then you might be a fit for AML. We want people who WANT to commit their hands, their heads, and their hearts to their position. You see this commitment in our employee Glass Door rating: an impressive 4.70 on 5.00.

What you inherit

A 70-person team distributed across Victoria, Halifax, Ontario, the UK, and remote. Established scorecard framework + ABC methodology. A CEO also playing the role of CPO, who provides operating philosophy and is your right‑hand partner. No HR team to inherit — you build it as you go. Active acquisition pipeline that will keep adding people and complexity. This is an HR seat for someone who treats high standards as a form of care for the team.

Your Mission

Bring our people system to life. AML’s HR function is built to raise individual and collective performance — which calls for high standards, honest feedback, and a willingness to coach through difficult conversations. Hire A-players. Run the review cycle. Equip managers to do the same. Cascade AML’s people system into every acquisition. Stay compliant across five jurisdictions.

What You’ll be Accountable For

• Owns A-Player Recruiting Pipeline: Are we hiring A-players by design?
• Owns Onboarding for A-Player Retention: Are new hires getting to A status and staying?
• Owns ABC Review Ops & Scorecard Currency: Are reviews happening frequently enough AND on current scorecards?
• Owns Manager Enablement on ABC: Can every people‑manager run ABC well?
• Owns Total Rewards Framework & Administration: Is AML’s total rewards offering competitive, deliberate, and well‑administered?
• Owns HR Compliance: Are we compliant across all jurisdictions?
• Plays for the First Team First: Is AML’s HR system being progressively cascaded?
• Creates a Succession Culture: Do key players on the team have ready successors?

Some Other Daily Duties

• Owns the recruiting funnel from open req to onboarded. Manages sourcing, candidate experience, hiring‑manager partnership.
• Runs the new-hire 90-day journey. Owns the cultural + role-functional + systems + AML Way orientation.
• Runs the company-wide quarterly review system: scorecards, calibration sessions, completion tracking.
• Trains line managers on ABC methodology + difficult-conversation skills. Sits in reviews to enable standardization.
• Comp framework refresh with market data, individual comp decisions admin, benefits enrollment campaigns.
• Owns employee handbook and HR policies across BC, NS, ON, UK, US. Annual jurisdiction audit.
• Handles employee complaints, escalations, investigations, performance plans, exit conversations.
• Employee survey, action planning, culture‑pulse cadence. Partners with CEO on cultural integration of acquired companies.
• Integration planning: during every acquisition, leads the people‑side integration — pre‑/post‑close assessment, scorecard build, AML onboarding, comp mapping, jurisdiction onboarding.

Your Skills & Competencies

• People Perception: Perception of fit and capability under social signal. Distinction between charisma and substance.
• Standards Resilience: Standards resilience under pressure. Resistance to hiring‑bar drift, rating inflation, and comp‑exception creep.
• People Systems Architecture: Systems-design instinct for people problems. Comfort moving fuzzy human dynamics into repeatable process.
• Influence Without Authority: Influence without formal levers. Trust, framing, and persuasion as the primary tools of the function.
• Directness in Hard Conversations: Directness in difficult conversations. Modeling the feedback managers need to learn.
• Comfort in Ambiguity: Equanimity in gray‑area situations. Tolerance for edge cases where no playbook exists.
• Trust Stewardship: Confidentiality, fairness, consistency, presence. The foundation under every other competency.
• Strategy-to-Practice Translation: Translation fluency between strategic intent and operating reality. The bridge from philosophy to practice.

What Other Experience is Required?

Education

Bachelor’s required in HR, business, or related field. CHRP, SHRM‑SCP, or equivalent designation strongly preferred. MBA or HR master’s a plus. You are a business person first and an HR professional second!

Experience

7+ years HR leadership including 3+ years at Director or senior manager level. Track record of running HR end‑to‑end at a 70+ person organization. Expertise in talent‑grid systems and behavioural assessment methodologies (Top grading, structured behavioural interviewing, or equivalent). Demonstrated experience designing, building, and operating a performance assessment system from the ground up — not just administering one inherited. Multi‑jurisdiction (Canadian provinces + US + UK) HR law experience strongly preferred given AML’s distributed workforce.

Industry Background

Growth‑stage experience preferred. Familiarity with the challenge of new people via acquisition a definite plus.

Other

Canadian work authorization. Victoria BC or Halifax NS base preferred. Comfortable as the one‑person HR function with executive presence to handle hard conversations across every level of the company. Travel expected between Victoria and Halifax, as well as to acquisition targets.

How to Apply?

Please send your complete history to hr @ AMLoceanographic.com. In your cover letter, please: 1) speak to what you’d do in your first 100 days in the role; 2) identify the 3 most impactful professional lessons you’ve learned, with specific examples from your career; and 3) name your personal core values, along with relevant examples of how you’ve applied each value to guide high‑stakes professional decisions.

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