HR & People Operations Lead

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a HR & People Operations Lead based in India.

This is a ground-up opportunity to build and lead the people operations function for a growing India-based team within a global, remote-first environment.
You will take ownership of the employee lifecycle, from recruiting coordination and offers through onboarding, engagement, payroll, compliance, and offboarding.
The role combines hands-on HR administration with the opportunity to create policies, processes, and employee experiences from scratch.
You will become a trusted point of contact for employees while providing leadership with clear insight into team engagement, concerns, and operational needs.
Your work will help establish consistent, scalable people practices as the organization grows across distributed teams.
You will partner closely with operations leaders and international People stakeholders while working with sensitive employee and payroll information.
The ideal candidate is comfortable operating autonomously, improving systems, handling difficult conversations, and building structure where it does not yet exist.

• Recruiting & Offers: Partner with hiring managers to define roles and coordinate sourcing, screening, interview scheduling, and candidate communications.
• Manage background checks, prepare and issue offer letters, and handle candidate negotiations within approved compensation bands.
• Track hiring pipelines and recruitment-related tickets while ensuring all hiring documentation remains accurate and complete.
• Onboarding: Own the end-to-end new hire experience from offer acceptance through the first 90 days, ensuring employees have the necessary access, equipment, documentation, and onboarding plan.
• Coordinate access provisioning and confirm completion of HIPAA, data security, and acceptable-use training where applicable.
• Collect and maintain employee documentation and create and manage employee records within the relevant HR platform.
• Run structured 30/60/90-day check-ins and communicate relevant feedback and themes to managers.
• Employee Engagement & Policies: Establish a regular engagement cadence through pulse checks, skip-level conversations, stay conversations, and exit interviews.
• Identify recurring employee themes and provide leadership with insights that can help address issues before they contribute to attrition.
• Manage India-specific holidays, leave, attendance, coverage requirements, and related policies, including public holiday pay, unforeseen absences, and equipment outages.
• Develop and implement people policies covering leave, performance appraisal, salary bands, workplace behavior, and conduct, ensuring consistent application across teams.
• Support managers with employee documentation, performance conversations, corrective actions, and clear escalation processes.
• Payroll & Compliance: Administer monthly payroll, resolve discrepancies and adjustments, and coordinate offboarding and full-and-final settlements.
• Maintain working knowledge of Indian labor and statutory requirements, including the Shops and Establishments Act, EPF, ESI, and income tax obligations.
• Monitor statutory deadlines and maintain employee and payroll information in a confidential, organized, and audit-ready manner.

Requirements

• 3–5 years of experience in HR operations, People Operations, or HR Generalist roles supporting an India-based workforce.
• Hands-on experience with payroll administration and employee onboarding.
• Working knowledge of Indian labor law and statutory compliance, including EPF, ESI, tax withholding, and the Shops and Establishments Act.
• Experience creating HR processes and policies in environments where formal systems or structures were not yet established.
• Comfortable serving as a primary HR point of contact for employees and communicating difficult or sensitive matters clearly and professionally.
• Strong attention to detail, particularly when managing numerical, payroll, employee, and compliance data.
• Excellent written and verbal English communication skills, with discretion when handling confidential or sensitive conversations.
• Proficiency with HRIS and payroll platforms; experience with Deel is strongly preferred.
• Comfortable using Excel or Google Sheets and documentation tools such as Notion, Google Drive, and Linear.
• Ability to work with partial overlap with US Eastern Time hours.
• Experience supporting remote or distributed teams managed from the US is a plus.
• Background in healthcare, revenue cycle management, BPO, or KPO operations is advantageous.
• Familiarity with recruiting and screening platforms such as Ashby, Checkr, or similar tools is beneficial.
• Experience running employee engagement surveys or developing an onboarding program from the ground up is a plus.
• Strong ownership, empathy, judgment, autonomy, accountability, and willingness to take initiative in a fast-growing environment.

Benefits

• Full-time remote position based in India.
• Opportunity to build a people operations function and HR infrastructure from the ground up.
• Broad ownership across recruiting, onboarding, employee engagement, payroll, compliance, policies, and employee relations.
• Collaboration with international leadership and distributed operations and People teams.
• Significant autonomy and responsibility in shaping scalable HR processes and the employee experience.
• Exposure to a growing, remote-first environment where initiative, accountability, empathy, and continuous improvement are valued.
• Opportunity to directly influence employee experience, operational consistency, and organizational growth.