People Operations

About this role

BUILD THE DATA INFRASTRUCTURE THAT POWERS PHYSICAL AI.

Physical AI is moving from research labs into production fleets across industries. As robots scale across the real world, from factories to vehicles, to defense - every workflow from product development to deployment becomes a data problem: what happened, when, on which robot, and why?

At Foxglove, we built the unified data platform for physical AI that developer and engineering teams use to answer those questions. We help teams make vast quantities of robotics data actionable, creating the data flywheel they need to develop, test, train, deploy, and operate robots with confidence.

About the role

This is the first dedicated People Operations hire at Foxglove. Today, HR operations, employment compliance, and people program execution all run through one person. As we scale through a period of significant headcount growth, we need someone to own the compliance and operational backbone of the people function so it can keep pace with the business.

You will own the employment compliance surface that currently sits with our outside counsel and our VP of Talent, run people operations end to end, and be the steady operator who keeps onboarding, offboarding, leave, and employee relations running cleanly. This is a high-ownership role for someone who is comfortable building structure where little exists and who can operate without an HR director layered above them.

About the team

You will join Foxglove’s Talent function alongside Talent Acquisition, IT, and Workplace. As we scale toward roughly 100 employees across multiple US states and a growing international footprint, this function is building the structure to keep pace. You will partner closely with the VP of Talent, outside employment counsel, our benefits broker, and work cross-functionally with hiring managers and finance.

What you’ll do

Employment compliance

- Multi-state wage and hour compliance across all jurisdictions where we employ workers, with primary depth in California and Washington and working knowledge in other states. This includes San Francisco local ordinances such as the Health Care Security Ordinance, Fair Chance Ordinance, and paid sick leave where applicable

- Assist with drafting employee agreements and commission plans, bringing in our external legal firm only as needed

- Worker classification (exempt vs. non-exempt, employee vs. contractor) against federal, DOL, and state standards

- Pay transparency and pay data reporting obligations

- Handbook and written policy maintenance, keeping policies legally current and internally consistent across jurisdictions

- Partnering with outside counsel on escalations rather than defaulting every question to them

Immigration and work authorization

- I-9 completion, reverification, and retention compliance

- Coordinating a light volume of employment-based immigration matters (TN, O-1A, E-3) with outside counsel, and tracking status, expiration, and reverification deadlines

Leave and benefits administration

- Administering federal and state leave programs (FMLA, CFRA, WA PFML, and other applicable state leaves) through our leave management platform, Cocoon

- Leading annual open enrollment and managing day-to-day benefits administration, including qualifying life events and employee benefits questions

- Supporting benefits compliance obligations alongside our broker, including ACA reporting, ERISA documentation, COBRA, and required notices

People operations

- Supporting HRIS administration and data integrity in Rippling: onboarding, offboarding, status changes, and reporting

- Running and supporting accurate, timely multi-state payroll in Rippling, partnering with finance

- Supporting compensation cycles and pay-band administration in Pave

- Running onboarding and offboarding execution

- Serving as a first point of contact for employee relations questions and supporting managers through performance conversations, role changes, and exits

- Supporting SOC 2 and security audits, including required training completion, and audit-ready evidence for HR matters

- Maintaining clean, audit-ready people records and process documentation

What we’re looking for

- 5+ years in HR, people operations, or employment compliance, preferably including time at a high-growth startup or scaling global company

- Demonstrated depth in US multi-state employment compliance, with hands-on California experience

- Working knowledge of I-9 and employment eligibility requirements, and comfort coordinating immigration matters with counsel

- Experience administering leave programs and supporting benefits compliance

- Strong operational instincts: you build process, close loops, and keep records clean without being asked

- Sound judgment on when to handle something directly versus escalate to legal

- A direct, low-drama communication style and comfort owning ambiguity

Bonus points

- Experience with our stack: Rippling, Ashby, Cocoon, Pave, Pulley

- Exposure to international employment compliance (EOR or direct entity), particularly in the EU

- PHR, SPHR, SHRM-CP, or SHRM-SCP certification

- Background supporting technical or engineering-heavy organizations

Why join Foxglove

- Work on real robotics problems. Robot data is large, messy, multimodal, time-sensitive, and tied to physical-world behavior. The problems we work on span ingestion, indexing, search, visualization, replay, connectivity, collaboration, evaluation, and operations.

- Build tools engineers rely on. Foxglove is used by robotics teams investigating failures, validating changes, reviewing field behavior, curating datasets, and operating production fleets. The work you do helps teams understand what their robots saw, what they did, and why they behaved the way they did.

- High-leverage product surface area. A better query path, visualization workflow, Fleet connection, UI primitive, API, onboarding flow, or…