Director, People Operations & Systems

About this role

We are building a lean, AI-enabled People function, and the Director of People Operations & Systems will own the infrastructure that allows it to operate accurately, efficiently, and at scale. This leader is accountable for our People systems ecosystem, people data integrity, payroll governance and controls, employee lifecycle operations, and the continuous redesign of People workflows through AI, automation, and self-service.
This is a builder role. You will inherit systems and processes that need to evolve, lead our transition to a modern HR technology environment, and create an operating model that reduces manual work while strengthening accuracy, controls, and the employee and manager experience. You will be close enough to the work to understand it deeply and step in when necessary, but your primary job is to build systems, controls, talent, and workflows that do not depend on you personally executing every transaction.
You will lead core People Operations capabilities, including payroll and benefits/compliance team members, and serve as the senior operational partner to Finance, IT, Legal, Security, Talent, and People leadership. The right person combines strong HR systems and payroll judgment with a first-principles mindset: you see a clunky process and ask not only how to automate it, but whether it should exist in its current form at all.
What You Will Own
People Systems & Technology

• Own the People technology ecosystem and roadmap, including HRIS architecture, system governance, integrations, access, vendor performance, and continuous improvement.

• Serve as the internal business owner for our planned HRIS modernization, leading requirements, data migration, configuration decisions, testing, training, rollout, and adoption in partnership with implementation experts and cross-functional stakeholders.

• Ensure People systems are designed around scalable workflows, clear controls, manager and employee self-service, and reliable downstream data.

• Partner with IT and Security on integrations, access controls, system changes, and audit requirements across the People technology stack.

People Data, Analytics & Controls

• Own the integrity and governance of People data, including organizational structure, job architecture fields, compensation-related data, employee records, and reporting structures.

• Build proactive data-quality controls that identify discrepancies before they create payroll, reporting, compliance, or employee-experience issues.

• Develop scalable dashboards and self-service reporting that give leaders timely insight into headcount, hiring, turnover, compensation, and talent trends.

• Reduce reliance on recurring manual reports by redesigning reporting workflows and automating repeatable data delivery wherever practical.

Payroll Governance & Operational Risk

• Lead the payroll capability and provide senior oversight of payroll operations, with accountability for accuracy, timeliness, controls, documentation, audit readiness, and effective issue resolution.

• Manage and develop the payroll team member responsible for day-to-day payroll execution; remain sufficiently close to the work to review controls, interrogate payroll outputs, understand multi-state requirements, and step in during high-risk or exceptional situations.

• Establish clear review and escalation mechanisms across People and Finance, including independent controls for high-risk payroll changes and exceptions.

• Redesign payroll and payroll-adjacent workflows as systems and automation mature, shifting the function toward governance, exception management, auditing, and continuous improvement rather than manual processing.

Employee Lifecycle & People Operations

• Own the effectiveness of the operational infrastructure supporting onboarding, offboarding, employment changes, contractor lifecycle processes, I-9/E-Verify, and Employer of Record operations for international team members.

• Ensure workflows are accurate, compliant, well controlled, and increasingly self-service; the role owns the effectiveness of the operating system even when another team member or system executes individual steps.

• Partner with Finance, IT, Legal, Security, Talent, and People Business Partners to create clean handoffs and clear decision rights across employee lifecycle processes.

• Maintain a resilient operating model with clear documentation, backup coverage, escalation paths, and ownership for recurring People operations.

Benefits, Compliance & Team Leadership

• Lead and support the Benefits & Compliance capability, ensuring the team has clear priorities, escalation support, strong vendor partnerships, and an effective compliance operating rhythm.

• Own operational compliance infrastructure and audit readiness while partnering with subject-matter experts, Legal, Finance, brokers, and external advisors where specialized judgment is required.

• Clarify roles, decision rights, controls, and service expectations across People Operations; coach team members to operate at the appropriate level and build durable functional capability.

• Build capacity through systems, partners, automation, and role clarity rather than defaulting to additional headcount.

AI-Enabled Operational Transformation

• Continuously identify manual handoffs, administrative bottlenecks, recurring reporting cycles, and control points that can be eliminated, simplified, automated, or redesigned.

• Use AI and automation as core tools for operating-model redesign—not simply individual productivity—including exception detection, data-quality auditing, workflow orchestration, employee/manager self-service, and recurring operational processes.

• Evaluate workflows from first principles before automating them: remove unnecessary steps, clarify ownership, reduce middle-person handoffs, and preserve human judgment where risk or complexity requires it.

• Measure whether redesigned workflows improve capacity, speed, accuracy, control, or…