Operations Associate

Paragon•Los Angeles, CA

12d•$70,000 - $85,000•Onsite

About The Position

You'll be the second operator at Paragon. Your hiring manager and partner is our Head of Strategy & Operations, who's spent four years building this function from scratch and wants a partner to extend it. You'll have line-of-sight into every function of the company: people, legal, finance, compliance, recruiting, vendors, IT, and more. Within twelve months, you'll know how Paragon operationally runs better than almost anyone here. It's a real operator role. Half of it is queue work: payroll, onboarding, benefits questions, vendor renewals, expense triage. You'll find satisfaction in systems that run smoothly and details done right. The other half is building. Paragon is AI-native by default - we already have a working bench of internal automations, and you'll extend it. You'll build automations alongside doing the work, with the Head of Ops as a design partner.

Requirements

1-3 years of operations / HR coordinator / EA / BizOps experience at a startup
Hands-on PEO or EOR experience (Deel, Rippling, Justworks, or similar)
Touched at least one compliance platform (Secureframe, Vanta, Drata, or similar)
Are a daily Claude / ChatGPT / Cursor user; have shipped at least one automation (Zapier, n8n, Make, Apps Script, custom script - any tool, any complexity)
Have written at least one SOP, runbook, or process doc that someone else used
Are fluent with the standard SaaS ops stack (HRIS, ATS, expense cards, MDM, e-signature, knowledge tools); willing to learn whatever's in front of you
Default to documenting and systematizing rather than memorizing
Have judgment about what to escalate vs. handle
Write clearly and patiently in vendor and employee threads
Operate well without close supervision

Nice To Haves

Built or contributed to internal tools / agents at a previous job
Familiarity with Claude Code, Cursor, n8n, Make, Retool
State leave law knowledge (CA PFL, WA PFML, NY PFL)
Experience scaling onboarding through 50 to 100 employees
SOC 2 / ISO 27001 / HIPAA evidence-gathering experience
Budget tracking or light variance analysis experience

Responsibilities

Run the details behind onboarding, offboarding, access, benefits questions, leave logistics, and employee changes
Keep payroll, benefits, and people data accurate
Turn repeated questions into docs, checklists, and lightweight self-serve resources
Keep the weekly compliance work moving: platform issues, security requests, evidence collection, access reviews, and follow-ups
Translate audit asks into practical next steps for Engineering, Ops, and other owners
Keep enough context documented that someone else can understand what happened without digging through five systems
Keep renewals, signing workflows, vendor accounts, and contract next steps organized
Route agreements through the right review, approval, and signature path
Catch the small problems early: stale seats, unclear owners, bad vendor answers, upcoming renewals, and spend that needs a decision
Keep scheduling, ATS hygiene, debriefs, and candidate communication moving
Help hiring managers run a tight process
Once ramped, help with first-round screens, outbounding, and candidate follow-through where it makes sense
Help keep expenses, reimbursements, invoices, cards, and spend review clean
Work the queues and leave a clear trail behind decisions
Make recurring finance work easy to inspect instead of dependent on memory
Own the basic LA office logistics: visitors, parking, mail, packages, supplies, and light facilities needs
Support All Hands, leadership meetings, monthly reporting, planning cycles, OKR follow-ups, and cross-functional action items
Make loose ends visible so important commitments do not disappear
Notice the repeatable work while you are doing it
Help turn the right candidates into agents, scripts, automations, or better workflows
Keep judgment manual where it matters, and automate the parts that are repetitive, brittle, or easy to miss