People Operations Specialist
Chainguard
The Role, In a Nutshell:
Are you passionate about creating people-first systems that empower teams to thrive? At Chainguard, we’re in rocketship mode, and we’re looking for a People Operations Specialist to help us scale with intention and excellence.
This role goes beyond keeping the trains running - it’s about designing and building the tracks for where we’re headed. As the backbone of our People function, you’ll help streamline and optimize processes, maintain scalable systems, and ensure compliance in an ever-evolving landscape. By keeping People Ops systems running smoothly, you’ll reduce friction, increase trust in People data, and enable the company to scale thoughtfully - while delivering consistent, high-quality support to employees.
You’ll have a unique opportunity to shape the core elements of our People Ops experience. By partnering across teams, you’ll help make complex challenges feel manageable and ensure every Chainguardian (our affectionate term for team members) feels connected, supported, and set up for success.
What You’ll Do:
- Employee Lifecycle Operations: Run onboarding, transitions, and offboarding logistics coordinating steps across teams, managing documentation, and keeping workflows organized and on track.
- Employee Experience & Support: Serve as the first point of contact for employee questions, providing responsive, high-quality support and improving “moments that matter” across the employee journey.
- Streamline & Uplevel Processes: Continuously improve and optimize People Ops processes and systems to increase efficiency and scalability.
- People Systems, Data & Insights: Own day-to-day People systems administration - serving as the point person for People systems, ensuring clean and accurate data, and supporting reporting and metrics to inform decision-making as we scale.
- Compliance Champion: Help keep us compliant by staying on top of employment laws, managing documentation, maintaining People policies, and implementing processes that align with regulations.
- Knowledge & Enablement: Own and continuously improve the People Ops knowledge base in Chainweb (our internal wiki) so People processes, policies, and FAQs are clear, current, and easy to find.
- Leave Administration Lead: Manage leave administration by tracking employee leave balances, processing leave requests, and ensuring alignment with applicable leave policies and local regulations.
- Benefits Support: Help employees navigate enrollment and resources, partner closely with the Benefits team to keep benefits information accurate and up to date, and escalate complex issues as needed.
- Cross-Functional Partner: Act as a liaison between People, Finance, IT, and other teams to drive operational excellence.
What We’re Looking For:
- 2–5 years of experience in HR, People Operations, or a similar role in a high-growth environment.
- Proven expertise with HR systems (e.g., Workday, ATS) and a passion for leveraging technology to streamline processes.
- Solid understanding of employment regulations and compliance requirements.
- Experience supporting global teams.
- Meticulous attention to detail - from People data to employee communications.
- Exceptional organizational skills and the ability to juggle multiple priorities.
- Passion for providing exceptional employee experiences.
- A proactive problem-solver who thrives in dynamic, fast-paced environments.
Why You’ll Love It Here:
- Fast-moving environment. If you enjoy pace, change, and iteration, you’ll thrive.
- Build structure as we scale. We’re growing quickly, and you’ll play a key role in bringing clarity and repeatable People Ops processes as we mature.
- Collaborative, low-ego partners. You’ll work closely with the People, Finance, IT, and Legal teams to solve real problems and make progress together.
- Make things clearer for everyone. You’ll turn scattered information into clear documentation and self-serve resources that help employees get answers quickly and confidently.
- The people make it special. You’ll join a team of thoughtful, kind humans who care about doing great work - and about each other.
- Flexibility with accountability. We’re remote-first and outcome-oriented, and we value clear communication and follow-through.
About Us
Chainguard is the secure foundation for software development and deployment. By providing guarded open source software, built from source and updated continuously, Chainguard helps organizations eliminate threats in their software supply chains.
Founded by the industry's leading experts on open source software, security and cloud native development, Chainguard has built the largest library of open source software that is secure by default.
Chainguard’s mission is to be the safe source for open source.
We live and breathe our company values:
We are customer obsessed - We focus on delivering solutions to our customers that create value and make their lives better.
We have a bias for intentional action - We prioritize, plan, try things, and fail fast.
We don’t take ourselves too seriously (but we do serious work) - We are solving an important problem which takes focus, but we also like to enjoy the journey.
We trust each other and assume good intentions - We’re transparent with decisions to empower team members to make well informed decisions.
A few of the benefits we offer:
- Flexible & Remote-First Culture: Work remotely with team meetup opportunities, bi-annual destination summits, and a monthly stipend for coworking spaces, phone and internet costs.
- Our Approach to Equity: Receive stock options upon hire and promotion. Plus, you can participate in secondary offerings and have 10 years to exercise your options (yes, you read that correctly: 10 years!).
- 100% Covered Health Insurance: We cover 100% of your health, vision and dental insurance premiums for you and your dependents. Nothing comes out of your paycheck.
- ∞ Flexible Time Off: Take the time you need – to do our best work, we need to recharge and reset.
- 18 Weeks Paid Parental Leave: We offer 18 weeks for birthing parents and 12 weeks for non-birthing parents, with the option to use it all at once or throughout your child's first year.
If your experience is close but doesn’t fulfill all requirements, please apply. We’re building the best team in technology and are focused on hiring “Chainguardians'' with unique backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences.
Chainguard is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, reproductive health decisions, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, genetic information, political views or activity, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.
By submitting your application, you acknowledge that Chainguard will process your personal data in accordance with Chainguard’s Privacy Policy.
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