Talent Business Partner

What This Role Is Cialfo operates in one of the most consequential intersections in global education: the moment a student decides where to study, and whether the school and counselor guiding them has the tools and support to make that decision well. The platform now serves more than 2,000 schools across 50+ countries. The team that powers it has grown at the same pace.

And somewhere in that growth, a gap opened up. Not in headcount or product capability, but in people infrastructure. What that means in practice: business leaders are making people decisions without a real thinking partner.

Performance conversations are happening inconsistently, or not at all. Managers are operating without the scaffolding that turns good instincts into reliable leadership habits. High performers lack development clarity.

There is data in the system, HiBob, OKR dashboards, engagement signals, but it is not being translated into insight that leaders can act on. That is the gap this role exists to close. Not through policy rollout or programme management.

Through genuine partnership with the leaders who run Cialfo's most critical business units, sitting close enough to the work to understand the pressures they're navigating, sharp enough to translate those pressures into people decisions that actually move the needle. This is a building role, not an operational maintenance role. The person in this seat will shape how Cialfo's people function works at the team level: what good manager practice looks like, how performance is held and developed, how the data in the system becomes decisions in the room.

What Makes This Role Different Most HR business partner roles at companies this size are maintenance functions. They onboard, they run engagement surveys, they handle ER cases when they escalate. The work is reactive.

The measure of success is absence of noise. This is not that role. Cialfo is at the stage where people infrastructure either scales with the business or becomes a ceiling on it.

The business units are growing. The managers running them are capable but largely unsupported on the people side. The data exists to make smarter decisions.

None of that potential is being realised yet, and the person in this role is the one who changes that. What you have here that you do not have at a standalone company: a multi-brand group context that creates learning exposure no single-brand HR role can match. As part of Manifest Global, operating across Cialfo, BridgeU, Explore, and Kaaiser, you are working within a people function that spans 50+ countries, multiple employment jurisdictions, and a VP of Talent who is actively building the playbook, not inheriting one.

You will have access to Manifest-wide talent infrastructure and tooling, and a team that treats people operations as a competitive capability, not a cost centre. The timing matters. Cialfo is at a growth inflection where the people decisions made in the next 12 to 18 months will set the culture and performance norms for the next phase of the company.

The TBP who shapes those foundations will have built something real.