Leads and scales People Operations infrastructure for a rapidly growing, distributed company. Responsibilities include managing People Operations staff, advising leaders on organizational design, overseeing performance and workforce planning, driving engagement and retention, leading onboarding and development, ensuring employment-law compliance, handling employee relations, implementing SOPs, and advancing AI-driven workflow automation. Partners with Talent Acquisition, Legal, IT, Finance, founders, and business leaders on people programs and change management.
COMPANY 🌱
WHAT YOU'LL DO 🎯
RYZE is hiring a Director, People Operations to build the operational and strategic backbone of the People function. Reporting to one of the Co-Founder's, this person will lead a team of People Operations Partners & Generalists while acting as a strategic partner to leaders across the business. This is a builder's role: someone who can move fast, make smart judgment calls, and turn strategy into programs that stick.
Responsibilities will include:
- Own People Operations end to end, building right-sized infrastructure, processes, and tools as RYZE scales across DTC, retail, and new categories.
- Lead, coach, and develop a team of People Operations Partners and Generalists
- Act as a trusted advisor to leaders across the business on team dynamics, organizational design, and growth challenges, structuring teams for scale.
- Design and lead performance management, succession planning, and workforce planning frameworks that connect individual goals to business priorities, including calibration, manager enablement, and data integrity across review cycles.
- Build retention, culture, and employee engagement strategies that keep pace with a fast-growing, distributed team.
- Lead learning and development and onboarding, giving every new hire a structured path from day one.
- Maintain a general working knowledge of compensation and benefits programs
- Ensure compliance with federal, state, and local employment law across a multi-state remote workforce, staying ahead of risk rather than reacting to it, and serve as the escalation point for employee relations matters.
- Building SOPs and communication frameworks that make delivery clean and consistent.
- Champion AI adoption and workflow automation across the People function, from document creation to performance plan development, to help the team run leaner and faster.
- Partner with Talent Acquisition, Legal, IT, and Finance to ensure smooth rollout of People Operations initiatives, and bring feedback into policies and processes.
- Partner with Founders and cross-functional leaders on org design and change management, translating strategy into action without getting stuck in process for its own sake.
Professional Qualifications
- 10+ years of progressive HR experience, including team leadership, earned in a high-growth startup or scale-up DTC, CPG, or omnichannel environment.
- Proven track record building and scaling People Operations infrastructure, not just maintaining what already exists.
- Hands-on experience across performance management, succession planning, workforce planning, retention, and employee engagement.
- Experience leading organizational design and change management
- Strong knowledge of federal, state, and local employment law, with real experience supporting a multi-state workforce.
- General working knowledge of compensation and benefits programs, and comfort with HR technology including HRIS platforms, ATS, and people analytics.
- Demonstrated experience with AI tools and workflow automation in HR
- Comfortable operating in a fast-moving, founder-led culture, with a strong bias toward moving things forward over getting stuck in process.
- Bachelor's degree in HR, Business Administration, or a related field.
WHAT WE OFFER 🌟
- Competitive compensation aligned with experience and market benchmarks.
- Comprehensive benefits package
- Paid time off and company-observed holidays.
- Opportunities for professional growth and development.
- A collaborative, inclusive, and supportive work environment.
- Access to tools, resources, and training to support success in the role.
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