Director, People Operations & Total Rewards

Keel Infrastructure•New York, NY

10h•Hybrid

About The Position

Keel Infrastructure is seeking a Director, People Operations & Total Rewards to join their team. This role is ideal for someone with experience in both publicly traded companies and startup/scale-up environments, capable of prioritizing and implementing all aspects of people operations. The candidate will possess deep expertise in establishing compensation frameworks for technical, professional, and executive levels, governance (including payroll, compliance, proxy filings, and audit requirements) for a publicly traded company, people technologies (including AI integration and forward-thinking HRIS implementation), and scalable process design for the entire employee lifecycle.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in a similar people operations role, including at least 3 in a people leadership capacity.
Experience in a publicly traded organization and experience in a fast-moving startup or high-growth environment; familiarity with energy, infrastructure, or technical operations is strongly preferred.
Experience in a multi-jurisdictional environment, including the US and Canada (ideally Quebec).
Demonstrated record of modernizing people & culture systems and processes—implementation/optimization of HRIS, payroll or workforce management tools.
Practical experience with payroll vendors, benefits administration, and compensation programs.
Experience managing risk around labor organizing and developing union-prevention/employee engagement strategies.
Experience applying automation/AI to P&C.
Excellent stakeholder management, communications, and change leadership skills.
Operational rigor and attention to compliance detail.
Project management and program rollout capability.
Change management and ability to modernize legacy systems/processes while engaging a team.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with energy, infrastructure, or technical operations is strongly preferred.

Responsibilities

Build and execute a people operations roadmap aligned to the company’s shift to data center development and overall growth plan, including team redesign and identification of talent gaps.
Ensure employment law compliance across PA, NY, and Quebec (and other jurisdictions as needed), including policies, recordkeeping, filings, and audits.
Develop and implement process to maintain employee handbook, employment policies, and standard operating procedures.
Partner with Employee Relations team and operations leaders to identify unionization risk, design proactive engagement strategies, and implement policies/practices that address employee concerns.
Lead the P&C AI integration ensuring optimization and improvement of transactional tasks, workflows, etc.
Evaluate existing P&C technology stack; recommend and implement new systems to modernize and scale capabilities.
Lead data governance, reporting, analytics, and KPIs to drive operational decision-making.
Review and implement compensation framework including job evaluation, salary changes, and market benchmarking across all levels, including executive.
Manage full benefits offering, benchmark for competitiveness.
Manage annual compensation cycle.
Support planning for Compensation Committee meetings in alignment with external compensation advisors, senior leadership team and Corporate Secretary.
Manage equity programs.
Oversee payroll processes; ensure accurate, timely pay across jurisdictions.
Build out entire P&C processes in line with business needs.
Manage recruitment process operations (offer administration, pre-onboarding, background screening, and internal mobility processes).
Work with Employee Relations team and hiring manager teams to ensure well aligned recruitment process.
Manage outsourced recruitment vendors, including RPO and other.
Standardized onboarding and offboarding processes implemented across sites.