Director of People Operations

UP Partnership•San Antonio, TX

4h•Hybrid

About The Position

The Director of People Operations leads the systems, practices, and strategies that enable our people to do exceptional work and our organization to perform at its best. Serving as the organization’s senior internal Human Resources expert, the Director has functional ownership of People Operations, including employee relations and compliance, talent acquisition, performance management, training and development, compensation and benefits, payroll administration, workforce planning, organizational learning, employee experience, and people systems and analytics. This role combines strong HR expertise with systems thinking, organizational development, and evidence-informed decision-making. The Director is expected not only to operate strong HR systems, but to continuously improve them and build the organizational capabilities needed for long-term success. The Director owns the People Operations function. Managers remain accountable for leading, coaching, developing, and managing their employees. The Director works in close partnership with the Chief Operating Officer and other leaders where people strategy intersects with organizational strategy, structure, financial stewardship, risk, leadership effectiveness, and significant organizational change. The Director must know when to lead, when to coach, when to advise, when to partner, and when to escalate.

Requirements

Significant progressive Human Resources or People Operations experience across multiple HR disciplines.
Demonstrated expertise in employment law and compliance, employee relations, compensation and benefits, performance management, talent management, and HR operations.
Experience advising senior leaders on complex employee and organizational matters.
Demonstrated success coaching managers and developing others.
Experience designing or strengthening training, professional development, leadership development, or organizational learning initiatives.
Strong analytical, problem-solving, systems-thinking, and continuous-improvement capabilities.
Experience using workforce data, credible research, and professional expertise to inform decisions.
Demonstrated ability to develop or significantly improve HR policies, systems, processes, or programs.
Comfort with HR technology and emerging tools.
Excellent communication, judgment, discretion, and relationship-building skills.

Nice To Haves

SPHR, SHRM-SCP, or demonstrated equivalent mastery.
Experience working with a PEO or similar outsourced HR, payroll, and benefits model.
Experience with organizational design, change management, workforce planning, leadership development, and/or organizational learning.
Experience with people analytics and workforce dashboards.
Experience applying AI, automation, or emerging technology responsibly within HR or organizational operations.

Responsibilities

Maintain legally compliant, consistent, equitable, and effective employment practices.
Lead employee relations, including workplace concerns, investigations, accommodations, leaves, corrective action, performance concerns, and separation processes.
Advise managers and leaders on employment matters and appropriate people-management practices.
Develop, interpret, administer, and improve HR policies, procedures, and documentation.
Identify, assess, and escalate significant people-related legal, compliance, ethical, financial, and reputational risks.
Maintain appropriate employment records, documentation, confidentiality, and controls.
Manage the organization’s PEO relationship and coordinate with employment counsel and other specialists as appropriate.
Monitor HR practices for recurring issues, inconsistencies, and opportunities for improvement.
Lead talent acquisition, selection, onboarding, and retention practices.
Lead the organization’s performance-management framework, processes, tools, and annual cycle.
Equip and coach managers to set expectations, provide feedback, develop employees, address performance concerns, and hold people accountable.
Lead the organization’s training and professional-development strategy.
Assess individual, team, leadership, and organizational development needs.
Design, coordinate, source, and evaluate employee, manager, and leadership development.
Establish effective individual development-planning practices and connect development to performance, competencies, career growth, and succession.
Build systems supporting continuing education, professional development, internal mobility, and emerging-leader development.
Ensure employees have equitable access to meaningful development opportunities.
Evaluate whether training and development investments improve capability, behavior, and performance.
Embed coaching as a core management and leadership practice.
Support the integration and sustained use of Results Count and other adopted organizational learning and results frameworks.
Ensure new employees receive appropriate training in Results Count and other competencies relevant to their roles.
Support organization-wide project-management capability and reinforcement of consistent project-management practices.
Strengthen role-appropriate data capability among employees and managers.
Use job analysis and competency practices to strengthen alignment among roles, responsibilities, skills, performance expectations, and organizational needs.
Connect onboarding, training, coaching, performance management, development, and succession into an integrated learning system.
Establish ways to assess whether critical competencies are being applied and sustained over time.
Develop People Operations priorities aligned with organizational needs and priorities.
Advise senior leaders on talent, workforce capacity, leadership capability, succession, and organizational effectiveness.
Lead workforce-planning analysis and identify critical roles, capability gaps, succession risks, and workforce vulnerabilities.
Develop succession-planning approaches and support internal talent pipelines.
Anticipate emerging workforce and capability needs.
Recommend strategies including internal development, recruitment, role redesign, technology, outsourcing, or additional capacity.
Help leaders distinguish individual performance issues from structural, leadership, workload, process, or system problems.
Partner on organizational design, role clarity, significant workforce changes, and change management.
Lead compensation research, benchmarking, salary administration, and job architecture.
Monitor internal equity and external competitiveness and develop evidence-informed recommendations.
Oversee employee payroll administration and PEO coordination.
Oversee benefits administration, enrollment, compliance, and relationships with benefits partners.
Evaluate compensation and benefits based on employee needs, competitiveness, equity, cost, and organizational sustainability.
Partner with Finance and executive leadership on workforce costs, compensation planning, and total-rewards strategy.
Ensure employees and managers understand applicable compensation and benefits practices.
Oversee HR technology, systems, workflows, records, and People Operations processes.
Maintain appropriate HR data integrity, confidentiality, access, documentation, and security practices.
Establish clear processes and standard operating procedures for critical People Operations work.
Develop meaningful workforce metrics, dashboards, and reporting.
Analyze trends in hiring, retention, turnover, compensation, engagement, performance, development, and workforce capacity.
Use workforce data, employee feedback, credible research, benchmarking, and professional expertise to inform recommendations.
Identify opportunities to simplify, automate, and improve People Operations processes, including responsible applications of AI and emerging technologies.
Evaluate whether People initiatives are achieving their intended outcomes.
Build documentation and distributed capability so critical processes do not depend on one person.
Develop meaningful mechanisms for understanding employee experience and organizational health.
Lead employee listening, engagement, and feedback processes.
Identify patterns affecting trust, collaboration, accountability, belonging, workload, retention, and organizational effectiveness.
Translate employee feedback and workforce information into actionable recommendations.
Help leaders understand how management practices, organizational systems, and decisions affect employees and culture.
Support organizational change with attention to employee impact, communication, adoption, and sustainability.
Supervise one People Operations team member and manage the organization’s PEO partnership and related external providers.
Establish expectations and priorities, providing regular coaching and feedback, delegating meaningful responsibility, developing team capability, holding team members accountable, and ensuring appropriate documentation and cross-training.
Model the leadership and development practices expected throughout the organization.