HR Manager

HR Manager 

Rebellion Fabrication | Wahoo, Nebraska | Full-time, on-site 

Reports to the President | Up to $125,000 depending on experience 

 

THE COMPANY 

Rebellion Fabrication is a structural and architectural steel fabricator in Wahoo, Nebraska, with a second location in Elkhorn. Roughly half our people are on the shop floor: welders, fabricators, material handlers, painters. The other half are in the office. We run on EOS. 

We have grown fast and we are still growing. We have committed to an ESOP, which means the people who build this company will own it. That shapes how we hire and how we treat people. 

THE SEAT 

This is the first dedicated HR seat at Rebellion. The President currently holds these accountabilities and is hiring this role to own them. 

It is a hands-on job. You are on the floor, in the conversations, and in the documentation. There is no HR team under you and no HR function to operate inside. You build it as you go, alongside a recruiter and an executive assistant who sit on the same team. 

This is not a leadership team seat and it is not a strategy role. If you are looking for a seat at the table where you shape direction and someone else handles the hard conversations, this will frustrate you. 

WHAT YOU OWN 

Employee relations and investigations 

You own employee issues start to finish. You investigate, you document, you close it. You are the named person employees bring a concern to before it becomes a complaint. 

Supervisor capability and process integrity  

You train supervisors to run performance and accountability conversations. You sit in on terminations. When the process is being skipped, you step in and slow it down until the facts and documentation are validated. Supervisor performance itself stays with their manager. 

Performance conversation follow-through 

Supervisors own their conversations. You make them capable of holding them and you make sure they actually happen on schedule. When a supervisor is behind, you press them directly. When it stays behind, you take it to Operations. 

New-hire integration through 90 days 

You build the 90-day plan with the supervisor and confirm it gets executed: week one, first 30 days, required training and tests. You check in with both the new hire and the supervisor. You catch the gaps early, and you catch the hires who are not going to make it. 

Compliance and safety-sensitive HR 

Post-incident investigation and documentation, work comp claims and carrier communication, the OSHA 300 log and recordability, required postings. You act directly regardless of reporting line. The shop owns safety execution: training, lockout/tagout, close-call review. 

WHAT IS NOT IN THIS SEAT 

Compensation architecture, benefits strategy, org design, recruiting strategy, culture direction, and safety program execution all sit elsewhere. You will have input. You will not own them. 

WHAT WE ARE ACTUALLY LOOKING FOR 

Two things matter more than everything else combined. 

The first is credibility with skilled trades. You can walk onto a shop floor and be taken seriously by welders and fabricators. You have thick skin and a sense of humor and you do not read as an outsider. Manufacturing or construction experience is the obvious path here, but it is not the only one. Hospitals, corrections, logistics, restaurants, military, field services, and ag produce the same thing. We will not screen you out for lacking a blue-collar background. 

The second is backbone in both directions. Most people in HR can confront an employee. Fewer will take a position on a decision that belongs to someone else, in the moment, while it is still live, and hold it when they are told to proceed anyway. That is the half of this job that is hard to hire for, and it is the half we care about most. Expect to be asked for a specific instance, what you did when you were overruled, and what it cost you. 

Beyond that: you are a doer who is not above unglamorous work, you have operated without an HR function underneath you, and you are willing to say “I don’t know yet” instead of performing confidence. 

PRACTICAL DETAILS 

• Based at the Wahoo shop, on-site. This is not a remote or hybrid role. 

• Elkhorn presence two to four times a month. 

• No direct reports. 

• Up to $125,000 depending on experience, plus benefits and participation in the ESOP as it is established. 

HOW TO APPLY 

Apply through our posting. If you make it past the first conversation, expect a working interview: real scenarios from our floor, and time in the shop with our operations team. We would rather find out early whether this fits, in both directions.