Sandbox - Associate, People Operations (Payroll)

Sandbox Associate

Sandbox is a boutique, associate-led, partner-backed consulting firm that helps venture-minded and values-aligned organizations navigate growth, transformation, and change across Finance, Recruiting, and Business Operations. We don't just advise. We build, run, and evolve the back-end functions companies depend on.

Our employees, affectionately referred to as Sandboxers, are a mix of repeat entrepreneurs, recovering corporates, reformed consultants, and rogue college grads who believe in a creative approach to traditional consulting. What connects us is a willingness to get our hands dirty, work collaboratively, and do what it takes to help clients succeed. Did we mention, this mindset helped earn us recognition as one of the Best Places to Work in Virginia.

About the Role

As our client list grows, so does our need for smart, resourceful team members who enjoy solving problems and getting things done. We are looking for someone who cares about people, takes initiative, and is excited to build and support HR functions for a variety of clients. Nestled under our Business Operations vertical, the Associate role will be our client's go to for all things payroll and compliance while helping to build and maintain the foundational aspects of our client's employee experience, including benefits, policies, performance, and internal systems. Like variety? Great, because no two days will look the same. On any given day, week, or month, you will:

• Own and process all Sandbox client payrolls (67 recurring payrolls and growing), ensuring accurate, timely runs across multiple states.
• Serve as the internal payroll, compliance, and tax administration subject-matter expert.
• Ensure clients remain compliant with state registrations, employment laws, tax filings, year-end reporting, and workers' comp audits.
• Handle payroll-related tax admin, including state/local registrations, notices, follow-ups, quarterly filings coordination, and issue resolution.
• Support benefits administration, including enrollments, life-change events, plan comparisons, employee questions, and coordinating with brokersespecially during open enrollment.
• Help clients build and maintain compensation programs, including organizing pay bands, supporting comp review cycles, preparing benchmarking data, and assisting with bonus or incentive program setup.
• Maintain up-to-date policies, handbooks, compliance documentation, and support client HR audits or multi-state requirements.
• Provide support for performance management cycles, including scheduling, templates, feedback tracking, and documentation.
• Deliver a consistent, organized onboarding and offboarding experience, ensuring documentation, checklists, and transitions run smoothly.
• Act as the team's HRIS specialist, maintaining and optimizing systems (ideally beyond Gusto), ensuring workflows function smoothly, and supporting client system setup or cleanup.
• Draft, edit, and maintain key HR documents, including policies, handbooks, internal playbooks, and scalable templates.
• Produce clean, accurate documentation for client deliverables: workflow maps, process documentation, audits, reports, and quality checks.
• Support general People Ops tasks as needed (performance cycles, light employee relations support, leave management, and other recurring HR workflows).
• Provide basic People Ops guidance to clients and internal teams, while understanding this role is not positioned as a full-scope HR Business Partner.
• Participate in intake and interview cycles if the role becomes shared across verticals.
• Jump into one-off HR operational tasks (often 12 hours monthly) that help keep client operations running smoothly.
• Flex into People Ops or Biz Ops occasionally when demand requires it, while maintaining payroll & compliance as the primary lane.

We Are Excited About You Because You

• Have 24 years of demonstrated HR experience (benefits, compliance, payroll, performance, or employee relations).
• Bring hands-on payroll processing experience, ideally across multiple states.
• Understand or can quickly learn state compliance, tax administration, and multi-state employment requirements.
• Have experience administering benefits, including open enrollment, changes, and vendor/broker coordination.
• Have HRIS experience and are comfortable deepening system expertise (Gusto is a bonus).
• Can manage structured, high-volume recurring workflows with strong task and deadline discipline.
• Can conduct structured conversations, gather information clearly, and translate it into clean, accurate documentation or draft reports.
• Thrive in structure, systems, and process, and bring a detail-oriented, low-error approach to recurring work.
• Communicate clearly and proactivelyespecially around deadlines, payroll cycles, and compliance requirements.
• Are comfortable acting as the specialist for payroll and compliance while supporting broader People Ops activities.
• Value clarity of expectations and scope; you prefer roles without bait-and-switch ambiguity.
• Are organized, responsive, and able to manage multiple clients or competing priorities without letting anything slip.
• Use strong judgment, think critically, and work independently while knowing when to ask for help.
• Bring a learner mindset, willing to deepen your skills across payroll, compliance, benefits, and systemseven when the work isn't yet "perfect."

You Will Love Playing in the Sandbox If Our Core Values Resonate With You:

• Curiosity | Be Insatiably Curious. Sandboxers demonstrate a relentless appetite for the pursuit of understanding. We never settle for surface level knowledge, but strive to dive deeper, uncover insights, and explore new possibilities.
• Scrappy & Nimble | We Understand the Gritty Business. Sandboxers are resourceful, creative, and resilient professionals who possess an entrepreneurial spirit, understand how to do more with less, and have a bias for action when it comes to solving startups' greatest challenges.
• Growth | Growth Is Universal. Sandboxers fail forward through experimentation, innovation, and calculated risk-taking to challenge ourselves, push the boundaries, and constantly evolve to meet the ever-changing needs of our team, our clients, and our communities. Growth is exciting. It's also messy. We exist for that part.
• Welcoming & Authentic | Come As You Are, We Choose You! Sandboxers celebrate and value our employees' and clients' authentic selves to build strong foundations of trust, foster diversity, and create vibrant and inclusive relationships.

Reasons It Pays To Be A Sandboxer (Besides The Pay Itself):

• Comprehensive health benefits with employer contribution. It pays to keep your employees healthy.
• Family-friendly, flexible work schedule with generous PTO and mental wellness days. Work-life integration is a thing and we are here to support.
• Employer-matched 401K. No time delays & no vesting schedules. Enroll and keep all money on day one.
• Ongoing professional development and networking opportunities.
• Monthly team events - we sure know how to host a happy hour and we are never too busy to break for a volunteer opportunity.
• Bragging rights that you are part of something BIG
• Most importantly, you get to go to sleep each night knowing you are helping savvy, driven entrepreneurs achieve their goals - how awesome is that??

At Sandbox, we know you're more than just your resume. Research shows women and people of color are less likely to apply unless they meet every qualification and we think that's a problem. If this role excites you, but your experience doesn't perfectly match every requirement, we still encourage you to apply. Our hiring philosophy looks to weed candidates INTO our process, not weed them out! Who knows, you may be just the right candidate for a future role inside or outside of the Sandbox. Just go for it and submit your resume.

We're also committed to transparency and fairness in compensation. Salary ranges are shared intentionally and are based on factors like experience, market conditions, and geographic location. We believe open conversations around pay help build trust, support equity, and empower candidates to make informed decisions.

Sandbox uses CereHive, an AI-supported hiring platform, to help streamline communication and organize candidate information throughout the hiring experience. We leverage technology to support our process, not replace our humans. We're proud to say that every application is reviewed by real people, with the goal of creating a match that feels thoughtful, transparent, and human-led from start to finish.