Senior Benefits and Leave Administrator

About the role

The Senior Benefits and Leave Administrator leads company-wide benefits reconciliation, vendor management, and open enrollment, with overall oversight of benefits administration across Oregon and California. This role also oversees leave of absence and ADA compliance for Oregon, and serves as a subject matter expert for California.

Responsibilities

• Own overall administration, accuracy, and compliance across all benefit offerings, providing employee-facing benefits support to employees while serving as the subject matter expert to the broader HR team
• Own the annual open enrollment process end to end across both states, including system configuration, communications, election audits, and post-enrollment reconciliation
• Carry out carrier and broker vendor management, including escalations and discrepancy resolution, serving as the day-to-day point of contact for brokers and benefit vendors
• Oversee the accuracy of enrollments, qualifying life events, terminations, and COBRA administration processed locally, and provide support for the broader HR team
• Serve as the primary administrator of benefit technology platforms, including data management, reporting, and vendor coordination with brokers and carriers
• Own day-to-day administration of leave of absence programs in Oregon from initial request through return to work, delivering compliant, empathetic service to employees navigating a leave
• Own day-to-day administration of ADA accommodation requests in Oregon, from initial request through resolution
• Serve as the subject matter expert and support resource for leave of absence, ADA, and FEHA accommodation requests in California, providing guidance and support to the CA HR team
• Support the CA HR team on complex or higher-risk leave and accommodation cases as needed
• Maintain consistent leave and accommodation tracking, documentation, and correspondence templates across both states to support a unified compliance standard
• Coordinate with carriers, payroll, and managers to ensure timely and accurate leave processing
• Support the HR team with process improvement initiatives, building and maintaining standard operating procedures for benefits, leave, and workers' compensation processes, and keeping documentation current as laws, vendors, or systems change
• Identify opportunities to streamline reconciliation, leave tracking, and claims workflows, and lead implementation of process improvements
• Provide cross-functional support to the broader HR team across all HR disciplines, including onboarding, employee relations, compliance, and HRIS, as workload and priorities require
• Train HR team members and people managers on benefits, leave, and workers' compensation procedures and system use

Qualifications

• 7+ years of progressive experience in benefits and leave of absence administration, including at least 2 years supporting multi-state operations
• Strong knowledge of FMLA, ADA, USERRA, COBRA, ACA, workers' compensation, and Oregon leave laws
• Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Business, or related field preferred; PHR, SHRM-CP, or CEBS certification a plus
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with a natural inclination toward puzzling through discrepancies and getting to root cause rather than just resolving the symptom
• Advanced Excel skills (pivot tables, VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP, formulas for large-scale reconciliation)
• Highly organized, with the ability to manage multiple concurrent cases, deadlines, and reconciliation cycles without dropping details
• Demonstrated experience reconciling carrier billing and HRIS data with a high degree of accuracy
• Hands-on experience administering an HRIS and benefits administration portal
• Strong attention to detail and comfort working independently as the sole owner of a high-volume, compliance-sensitive function
• Ability to partner cross-functionally with HR, Payroll, brokers, and carriers to resolve discrepancies, and to support the HR team across a broad range of HR disciplines