T
People Operations Manager
Transluce
23 hours ago
Full-time
On-site
Salary range: $150,000 - $200,000/year depending on experience + comprehensive
benefits.
Description: Today's AI systems are difficult to understand — even experts
struggle to predict behaviors like blackmail or sycophancy. And most analyses of
AI systems are done behind closed doors, by the same labs deploying them.
Society cannot rely on AI developers to grade their own homework.
Transluce is a non-profit research lab building world-class tools to oversee AI
and steer its development for the public good. We use AI to investigate AI, at a
scale manual testing cannot reach, and we build in public so anyone can use what
we make. We are growing from 20 to 40+ employees in the next 12 months.
About the role: Our team is our most important asset. So hiring well, keeping
the people we hire, and building a place worth staying are among the
highest-leverage things we do. We are looking for a People Operations Manager to
be the first person at Transluce whose whole job is people.
Hiring is the most urgent piece because half the people who will work here a
year from now have not been hired yet. Who we hire and how fast we find them
determines how quickly we progress our technical ambitions. In tandem, you’ll be
responsible for embedding our culture: we want our 40-person team to be not just
bigger, but better. So, we need to design good practices and systems now: how to
welcome people, how to solicit feedback, and how to get people what they need.
If we get things right now, the benefits compound for all future employees.
We have a solid operational foundation (e.g., HRIS, benefits, ATS), but a lot of
what works for 20 people will not work for 40+. Your role is to decide what gets
built and in what order, so we get ahead of problems rather than repairing them.
Strategy and execution are not separable here: the systems you design are the
ones you run, and the judgment calls you make are informed by your hands-on
experience. Since we are a very small team, you may also flex into other
operational domains, further expanding your skillset.
This is an individual-contributor role reporting to the Chief of Staff. You will
steward and mature our People Operations function, directly advising the
leadership team on key directional decision-making. We expect to continue
expanding the operations team. You would help define these roles and hire for
them.
You are ...
* Energized by building a whole domain and ready to be the core person
accountable for its excellence
* Opinionated about how hiring, development, culture, and compliance should
work—and eager to apply and test those best practices in our specific context
* As invested in running a process well as in designing it
* Observant and relentless. You are unable to leave a broken process alone. You
notice the friction and fix it
* Able to catch the error in a payroll run while still thinking about what we
need to build next quarter
* Trusted by colleagues to be a listening ear and to handle sensitive
situations well
Core responsibilities: You will build our people operations infrastructure and
drive its day-to-day execution including deciding where to automate, streamline,
or outsource.
* Hiring: you enable Transluce’s growth by ensuring we can hire the best people
* Own our hiring process end-to-end and run it: candidate communications,
scheduling, program management, and funnel analysis
* Shape our sourcing strategy (channels, events, partners, outreach) to
increase the quality of our top of funnel
* People: You design the employee experience from recruitment to last day
* Develop seamless onboarding practices, providing new employees with
everything they need in their first week rather than their first month
* Own our benefits, payroll, and HRIS: run them yourself, decide which
vendors we use and when we switch, and be the person the team trusts with
questions about any of it
* Establish the policies and practices that keep our culture strong as we
grow: candid feedback, continuous learning, and clear expectations for what
good work looks like.
* Advise managers and employees through sensitive people situations,
including performance concerns, conflict, feedback, and other
employee-relations issues
* Compliance: You own our federal and multi-state employment compliance. You
draw the line between what we handle in-house and what you escalate to
outside counsel and our HR providers.
* Make the calls that carry real risk: leaves, accommodations, and how we
classify employees and contractors
* Meet the deadlines that cannot slip: visa cases with external counsel,
business licenses, state registrations, required trainings and postings
Minimum qualifications
* Has owned hiring rounds end to end alongside hiring managers, with a strong
foundational understanding of HR fundamentals
* Has owned core people operations (payroll, benefits, onboarding, visas) and
is excited to run them hands-on
* Strong interpersonal skills with demonstrated ability to navigate complexity
with honesty, care, and discretion
* Excellent written and verbal communication skills
Preferred qualifications
* At least 4 years of professional experience including running people
operations, ideally at growing startups or nonprofits. Candidates with less
overall experience or nontraditional backgrounds are encouraged to apply and
may be considered for similar roles
* Experience recruiting highly sought-after technical or research talent;
familiarity with the AI research ecosystem is a plus
* Experience scaling a people function as an organization grows
* Already leverages AI and other productivity tools to work effectively or
eager to learn. Deep technical skills not required.
This role might not be for you if …
* you want to set direction and hand the details to someone else
* you dislike ambiguity and prefer having an established playbook to work from
* employee relations drains you.
We work from our San Francisco office four days a week: our in-person culture is
a big part of what makes Transluce special. We are open to sponsoring
international visas for exceptional candidates.
benefits.
Description: Today's AI systems are difficult to understand — even experts
struggle to predict behaviors like blackmail or sycophancy. And most analyses of
AI systems are done behind closed doors, by the same labs deploying them.
Society cannot rely on AI developers to grade their own homework.
Transluce is a non-profit research lab building world-class tools to oversee AI
and steer its development for the public good. We use AI to investigate AI, at a
scale manual testing cannot reach, and we build in public so anyone can use what
we make. We are growing from 20 to 40+ employees in the next 12 months.
About the role: Our team is our most important asset. So hiring well, keeping
the people we hire, and building a place worth staying are among the
highest-leverage things we do. We are looking for a People Operations Manager to
be the first person at Transluce whose whole job is people.
Hiring is the most urgent piece because half the people who will work here a
year from now have not been hired yet. Who we hire and how fast we find them
determines how quickly we progress our technical ambitions. In tandem, you’ll be
responsible for embedding our culture: we want our 40-person team to be not just
bigger, but better. So, we need to design good practices and systems now: how to
welcome people, how to solicit feedback, and how to get people what they need.
If we get things right now, the benefits compound for all future employees.
We have a solid operational foundation (e.g., HRIS, benefits, ATS), but a lot of
what works for 20 people will not work for 40+. Your role is to decide what gets
built and in what order, so we get ahead of problems rather than repairing them.
Strategy and execution are not separable here: the systems you design are the
ones you run, and the judgment calls you make are informed by your hands-on
experience. Since we are a very small team, you may also flex into other
operational domains, further expanding your skillset.
This is an individual-contributor role reporting to the Chief of Staff. You will
steward and mature our People Operations function, directly advising the
leadership team on key directional decision-making. We expect to continue
expanding the operations team. You would help define these roles and hire for
them.
You are ...
* Energized by building a whole domain and ready to be the core person
accountable for its excellence
* Opinionated about how hiring, development, culture, and compliance should
work—and eager to apply and test those best practices in our specific context
* As invested in running a process well as in designing it
* Observant and relentless. You are unable to leave a broken process alone. You
notice the friction and fix it
* Able to catch the error in a payroll run while still thinking about what we
need to build next quarter
* Trusted by colleagues to be a listening ear and to handle sensitive
situations well
Core responsibilities: You will build our people operations infrastructure and
drive its day-to-day execution including deciding where to automate, streamline,
or outsource.
* Hiring: you enable Transluce’s growth by ensuring we can hire the best people
* Own our hiring process end-to-end and run it: candidate communications,
scheduling, program management, and funnel analysis
* Shape our sourcing strategy (channels, events, partners, outreach) to
increase the quality of our top of funnel
* People: You design the employee experience from recruitment to last day
* Develop seamless onboarding practices, providing new employees with
everything they need in their first week rather than their first month
* Own our benefits, payroll, and HRIS: run them yourself, decide which
vendors we use and when we switch, and be the person the team trusts with
questions about any of it
* Establish the policies and practices that keep our culture strong as we
grow: candid feedback, continuous learning, and clear expectations for what
good work looks like.
* Advise managers and employees through sensitive people situations,
including performance concerns, conflict, feedback, and other
employee-relations issues
* Compliance: You own our federal and multi-state employment compliance. You
draw the line between what we handle in-house and what you escalate to
outside counsel and our HR providers.
* Make the calls that carry real risk: leaves, accommodations, and how we
classify employees and contractors
* Meet the deadlines that cannot slip: visa cases with external counsel,
business licenses, state registrations, required trainings and postings
Minimum qualifications
* Has owned hiring rounds end to end alongside hiring managers, with a strong
foundational understanding of HR fundamentals
* Has owned core people operations (payroll, benefits, onboarding, visas) and
is excited to run them hands-on
* Strong interpersonal skills with demonstrated ability to navigate complexity
with honesty, care, and discretion
* Excellent written and verbal communication skills
Preferred qualifications
* At least 4 years of professional experience including running people
operations, ideally at growing startups or nonprofits. Candidates with less
overall experience or nontraditional backgrounds are encouraged to apply and
may be considered for similar roles
* Experience recruiting highly sought-after technical or research talent;
familiarity with the AI research ecosystem is a plus
* Experience scaling a people function as an organization grows
* Already leverages AI and other productivity tools to work effectively or
eager to learn. Deep technical skills not required.
This role might not be for you if …
* you want to set direction and hand the details to someone else
* you dislike ambiguity and prefer having an established playbook to work from
* employee relations drains you.
We work from our San Francisco office four days a week: our in-person culture is
a big part of what makes Transluce special. We are open to sponsoring
international visas for exceptional candidates.