Director of People
About the role
Atomic Machines is scaling past 250 employees. We're looking for a builder to join as our Director of People and design and lead the People function. This opportunity owns People end to end: the systems, infrastructure, programs, and compliance that let a hardware company grow fast without breaking. You'll lead a team across the operational lifecycle from onboarding through offboarding, total rewards, and the People systems and data foundation the company runs on. You'll also own our move off a PEO to in-house benefits and payroll, stand up the multi-state footprint that comes with our first out-of-state site, drive organizational development and learning, and lead our HR Business Partner function. You will report to the VP of People & IT and partner regularly with senior leadership, including the CEO, alongside our Head of Strategic Growth, IT, and Finance, representing our operational and organizational core HR functions. This is a role for someone who loves to build and build teams. To be successful, you’ll need to evaluate technology, modernize processes, implement systems, and design programs serving a workforce that spans engineering, R&D, manufacturing, operations, and corporate functions. We're a hardware company, and hardware moves differently than software. We need someone who has (or is excited to) build People in a hardware, manufacturing, or deep-tech environment and understands why that context changes what good support looks like. This role is based in our Emeryville office.
Responsibilities
- People Operations: Own the operational employee lifecycle: onboarding, transfers, leaves, offboarding, and the process, documentation, and governance underneath each
- Lead the transition of benefits and payroll from our PEO to in-house administration
- Own payroll operations, including multi-state payroll as we expand beyond California
- Design scalable processes and internal documentation that hold up as headcount grows
- Total Rewards & Benefits: Own benefits strategy, design, annual renewals, and broker relationships
- Run compensation administration, including cycles, band maintenance, and the operational side of merit and equity refresh
- Manage leave administration, workers' compensation, and 401(k) administration
- Compliance, Risk & Immigration: Own employment compliance in California and every state we operate in, and stand up compliance infrastructure for our first out-of-state location
- Manage immigration in partnership with outside counsel
- Own I-9, records retention, employee data privacy, required filings, and audit readiness
- Partner with EHS and Operations on workplace safety programs across office and manufacturing environments
- People Programs & Business Partnering: Lead our HR Business Partner function, setting the standard for how People supports the business
- Build and improve the operating machinery behind performance management, employee development, and organizational effectiveness
- Partner with the Head of Strategic Growth so People programs align to business priorities and organizational growth
- Organizational Development & Learning: Build the organizational development practice: org design support, capability planning, and the frameworks leaders use to structure and grow their teams
- Design and run learning and development programs, from manager enablement to functional skill building across engineering, manufacturing, and corporate teams
- Treat onboarding as a development experience, not just a process, so new Atomizers reach productivity quickly in a deeply technical environment
- People Systems & Data: Evaluate, implement, and optimize HRIS and People technology that enables scale
- Own People data integrity, reporting, and the headcount analytics Finance and leadership rely on
- Apply sound judgment about when AI tools genuinely improve People work and when they don't, weighing accuracy, confidentiality, and employee trust before adopting new tools or workflows
- Leadership & Team: Lead, coach, and develop the