People Operations - Benefits & Systems

About the role

At Clay, People Operations is about creating the environment where people can do the best work of their careers. As we continue to grow, we are looking for someone who can own our benefits, programs and systems that take care of our people and keep the experience running smoothly behind the scenes.

Responsibilities

• Manage day-to-day administration of our global benefits programs, including health, dental, vision & retirement.
• Serve as a main point of contact for employee benefits questions, and make sure people get clear, timely answers.
• Evaluate our benefit plans to regularly to ensure we are offering the best benefits for our team to both take care of our people and keep us competitive.
• Lead open enrollment from start to finish: communication, system setup, and vendor coordination.
• Partner with brokers and vendors on renewals, issue resolution, and evaluating our benefits offerings.
• Keep us compliant with relevant regulations (ACA, ERISA, COBRA, FMLA, and similar).
• Audit benefits data regularly to catch and fix discrepancies before they become bigger problems.
• Serve as the primary administrator for our HRIS, Rippling, including employee records, workflows, and permissions.
• Build and maintain reports and dashboards in Rippling to support People team and business needs.
• Configure and maintain integrations between Rippling and our benefits.
• Set up and manage automated workflows for onboarding, offboarding, and status changes (ex. new hires, terminations, promotions, leaves).
• Own vendor relationships for our People systems, including renewals, contract review, and evaluating new tools or add-ons.
• Troubleshoot issues and serve as the main point of contact for Rippling support.
• Create documentation and process guides so the team knows how to use these tools correctly.
• Find ways to automate manual processes and improve how we communicate updates to employees.
• Build scalable processes and infrastructure as we continue to grow.
• Keep our data organized and accurate to support reporting, compliance, and decision-making.
• Get ahead of issues before they become employee-facing problems.
• Advise People team, managers, and employees on benefits and systems questions with clear, practical guidance.
• Make complex benefits and systems topics easy to understand for people at every level.
• Contribute to broader People Operations work as the team and company grow.

Requirements

• 5+ years in benefits administration, HR systems, or a combination of both.
• Hands-on experience with an HRISS.
• Solid understanding of benefits compliance requirements.
• Experience building or improving processes at a scaling company.

Qualifications

• Autonomy and ownership: you take full accountability for your work, follow through on commitments, and don't let things fall through the cracks.
• Genuine care: you care about the people you support, and it shows in how you handle their questions and issues.
• Exceptional attention to detail: in benefits and systems, small mistakes have big consequences; you catch them before they happen.
• Outstanding communication skills: you can translate complex benefits and systems topics into plain language.
• Highly organized with the ability to manage multiple priorities.
• Comfort with ambiguity and building structure where none exists.
• Bias toward action, balanced with sound judgment on compliance risk.