People Operations Lead

Responsibilities

• Executes accurate, compliant, on-time payroll for every Akina employee and serves as the primary liaison with payroll and benefits vendors to ensure issues are resolved without disruption.
• Owes benefits program planning and administration, including annual renewal evaluation, plan design input, enrollment management, and all employee changes and terminations.
• Conducts regular compensation benchmarking and brings forward data-driven recommendations to the CPO to keep Akina's pay structures market-competitive and internally equitable.
• Manages the people tech stack and all employee records within it, ensuring platforms are configured correctly, data is complete and audit-ready, and systems reflect real-time employment status at all times.
• Owns the organization of the PVT shared drive, including templates and systems documentation, ensuring all materials are current, accessible, and consistently maintained.
• Produces and maintains people reporting and leadership dashboards, with data that is accurate and timely.
• Proactively monitors federal, Virginia, and multi-state employment law changes, assesses their impact on Akina, and brings forward recommended operational adjustments before deadlines, serving as the primary liaison with outside employment counsel as needed.
• Owns the employee handbook and all HR policies, managing documentation, retention schedules, and updates to ensure every policy is current, legally sound, and consistently applied across the organization.
• Executes all onboarding and offboarding workflows accurately and on time, ensuring every entry and exit is compliant, complete, and reflects a consistent Akina experience.
• Owns the performance cycle calendar and guides managers through quarterly conversations, anniversary reviews, 90-day probation checkpoints, and performance improvement processes from documentation through resolution.
• Serves as the primary advisor for managers and employees on all people matters, including policies, benefits, leave, and employee relations, and owns the department inbox.
• Owes the documentation and continuous improvement of all people operations processes, building and maintaining a library of clear, current SOPs that allow the function to scale consistently as Akina grows.
• Manages all vendor relationships and external recruiter partnerships, owning day-to-day issue resolution, performance accountability, contract renewals, and new vendor sourcing and onboarding.
• Owns the department budget and expense tracking, maintaining accurate records and flagging variances to the CPO proactively.
• Captures Akina's company-wide meeting cadence and manages learning and development programs and culture initiatives, ensuring consistent execution quarter over quarter.

Qualifications

• 5 to 8 years of HR or people operations experience in organizations with 50 or more employees, with demonstrated ownership of payroll, benefits administration, compliance, and HRIS management.
• Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, or a related field preferred.
• PHR or SHRM-CP preferred.
• Strong proficiency in at least one HRIS platform, including recordkeeping, reporting, and configuration, with comfort across payroll processing and benefits administration tools.
• Solid working knowledge of federal employment law including FLSA, FMLA, ADA, Title VII, and COBRA, with Virginia-specific compliance fluency and demonstrated ability to manage multi-state remote workforce obligations.
• High discretion in handling confidential information.
• Preferred: Experience supporting a workforce scaling through a period of significant growth, Prior involvement in an HRIS implementation or system migration, Familiarity with EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System).