People Operations Manager

About Embarc Advisors

Embarc Advisors was founded to break the mold of traditional finance careers - built by a former Goldman Sachs banker and McKinsey consultant who saw a better way to do this work. We're one of the fastest-growing firms in our space, with revenue up nearly 3x over the past three years and multiple repeated rankings on the Inc. 5000 list of America's fastest-growing private companies. We're scaling fast, and we're doing it without sacrificing the culture that got us here.

Role Overview

Job Type: Full time
Location: Remote (Mountain and Central time zones preferred)

Responsibilities

• PEO Coordination & HR Administration
• Serves as the firm's primary point of contact with its PEO for HR administration, benefits enrollment, payroll processing, and compliance filings.
• Coordinates open enrollment, benefits changes, and leave administration in partnership with the PEO.
• Maintains accurate employee records and ensures data consistency between internal systems and the PEO platform.
• Fields employee HR inquiries and resolves or escalates to the PEO as appropriate.
• Recruiting
• Manages full-cycle recruiting: job postings, sourcing, screening, interview coordination, and offer administration.
• Partners with practice leads to establish hiring criteria and structured, work-sample-based interview processes.
• Administers employee referral programs and recruiting-related reporting (pipeline, time-to-fill, source effectiveness, cost-per-hire).
• Onboarding, Professional Development & Offboarding
• Owns new-hire onboarding, paperwork, systems-access coordination with the PEO, orientation, and 30/60/90-day ramp plans.
• Designs and delivers professional development and training programs; tracks completion and effectiveness.
• Supports career-pathing and competency frameworks in partnership with practice group leaders.
• Manages termination processing (voluntary and involuntary), including PEO coordination, final-pay compliance, and COBRA/benefits-continuation notices.
• Conducts exit interviews and tracks attrition trends (voluntary vs. involuntary) by practice group.
• Ensures terminations follow documented, legally compliant processes consistent across all states of operation.
• Multi-State Compliance, Benefits, 401(k) & Payroll
• Ensures compliance with multi-state employment laws in partnership with the PEO and outside counsel as needed.
• Coordinates 401(k) plan administration, enrollment, contributions, compliance testing, and annual filings, with the plan provider and/or PEO.
• Covers immigration and work-authorization matters in partnership with the PEO, outside counsel, and affected employees, including sponsorship needs, required documentation, filing timelines, and ongoing compliance.
• Maintains and updates the employee handbook and HR policies to reflect current multi-state requirements.
• Oversees payroll accuracy in partnership with the PEO, including multi-state tax withholding, and resolves discrepancies promptly.
• Budget Alignment, Cost Reduction & Vendor Negotiation
• Partners with the COO to build and manage the annual HR, benefits, PEO, and recruiting operating budget, tracking expenses against plan and flagging variances.
• Leads negotiations with the PEO, benefits carriers, 401(k) provider, and recruiting vendors to secure favorable pricing, terms, and renewal rates.
• Identifies and executes cost-reduction opportunities across benefits design, staffing levels, and vendor contracts without compromising employee experience or compliance.
• Brings compensation expertise to market benchmarking, offer structuring, and bonus/incentive plan design; partners with leadership on pay equity and positioning.
• Performance Metrics & Capacity Management
• Designs and implements performance-metric frameworks and scorecards by role, tied to the firm's EOS scorecard and practice-group KPIs.
• Tracks individual and team performance data, partnering with practice leads on review cycles, calibration, and development planning.
• Manages capacity and utilization planning across Strategic Finance, Transaction Diligence, and Corporate Development, forecasting staffing needs against workload and pipeline.
• Partners with practice leads to flag capacity gaps or overages and inform hiring, cross-staffing, or workload-rebalancing decisions.
• Data, AI & Process Optimization
• Applies AI tools across the employee lifecycle to optimize processes, screening, policy drafting, performance-metric analysis, communications, and reporting.
• Evaluates and pilots emerging AI/HR-tech tools, recommending adoption where they improve efficiency, accuracy, or cost.
• Builds and maintains HR dashboards and metrics (headcount, attrition, time-to-fill, ramp success, benefits utilization, cost-per-hire, capacity/utilization).
• Proactively identifies and implements process improvements across the employee lifecycle.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in human resources, people operations, or a related role.
• Bachelor's degree with relevant undergraduate focus.
• Exceptional organizational and project management skills.
• Strong written and verbal communication abilities.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities simultaneously while remaining calm, maintaining attention to detail, and aligning with broader business priorities.
• High level of professionalism and discretion handling confidential information.
• Strong judgment, business acumen, and problem-solving skills, with the ability to learn quickly and make informed decisions.
• Demonstrated ability to be proactive, responsive, and comfortable anticipating needs before being asked.
• Entrepreneurial self-starter mindset and dedication to improving processes and creating structure.
• Advanced proficiency with Microsoft 365, including Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
• Able to work within HCM software modules.
• Experience using AI tools to drive automation, organization, and efficiency.

Preferred

• Experience operating effectively in a fast-paced and evolving environment.
• Experience in professional services, consulting, finance, investment banking, M&A advisory, legal services, accounting, or a related industry.
• Familiarity with iSolved software, Docusign, and project management tools.