Founding Senior HR Generalist / People Operations Lead (ONSITE IN SF)

Location: San Francisco, CA (5 days/week) Employment Type: Full-Time Compensation: $160,000 – $185,000 Visa: Not available We are hiring our first dedicated HR leader to build and own the People function from the ground up. This is not a strategic CHRO role; it is a hands‑on operational builder role. The company is an AI firm building enterprise AI agents across voice, chat, and email for major B2C companies. Recently raised $61M and is scaling rapidly, operating lean with strong autonomy and clear commercial traction. The business is at an inflection point—scaling headcount and formalizing internal operations. You will: Own the full employee lifecycle Bring structure to informal processes Maintain compliance in the California employment environment Partner closely with Finance and external counsel Build scalable HR foundations Once fundamentals are in place, the role may expand into performance management, manager enablement, and broader People initiatives What You’ll Own End‑to‑end onboarding and offboarding Employment documentation and agreements Rippling (source of truth) Benefits administration and broker relationships Payroll partnership and compliance Terminations and severance handling California employment law application Building scalable HR workflows Supporting future performance and culture initiatives Must‑Have Requirements 4–7 years of HR experience Prior experience as the first or an early HR hire at a venture‑backed startup California employment law fluency HRIS fluency (Rippling preferred) Payroll fundamentals and Finance partnership experience Experience handling terminations and severance with sound judgment Based in the SF Bay Area, 5 days in‑office Nice to Have Rippling expertise Experience supporting sales orgs (commission structures) Multi‑state or international employment exposure Performance management process design Broader People Ops experience #J-18808-Ljbffr PulseRise Technologies