People Operations Partner

About Tensec

Tensec is Vertical AI for cross-border trade. Trade is two flows, money and goods, and the trading companies that move them: freight forwarders, shipping lines, customs brokers, 4PLs — still run both on systems built for large corporations and a lot of manual work. Tensec is the agentic AI layer those companies use to move both flows for their importer and exporter clients: FX and payments today, quoting and booking next, trade finance to follow. Cross-border B2B is a $50 trillion market. We're building the version everyone else can use.

We started in the US, Mexico, and Brazil and are expanding globally, onboarding enterprise trading companies whose trade flows run to billions of dollars a year across every major corridor. Founded in 2023 by a team that has built and exited startups and run global teams at Meta, PayPal, Credit Karma, Goldman Sachs, Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. Tensec is backed by world-class investors such as Quiet Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, Renegade Partners, Clocktower, and WillowTree.

Your mission

Tensec is hiring across three countries and adding more. Right now, People Ops runs on tribal knowledge and one-off fixes, you're here to change that. You will build the policies, workflows, and systems that let the employee lifecycle scale without scaling headcount, and you will own the tools that make it real.

Outcomes — your first 12–18 months

• Onboarding that runs without you in every step. You own employee onboarding end to end across Brazil, Mexico, and the US, new hires show up to a process that's documented, consistent, and doesn't depend on you personally remembering what's next.

• Policies people can actually find. Employees self-serve instead of opening a ticket. Every People Ops policy, procedure, and workflow: onboarding, offboarding, leave, benefits administration, documented, versioned, and standardized across all three markets.

• Manual work replaced with automation. Aim for fewer manual touches per employee action.

• An HRIS that's actually configured, not just adopted. You own configuration end to end: workflows, approval chains, fields, integrations. When something breaks or a market needs a new process, you build it in the system instead of routing around it in a spreadsheet.

• A real point of view on HR tech. You evaluate new tools against what the business actually needs: cost, fit, implementation lift, and you make the call to adopt or pass. Tools you champion get implemented; tools that don't earn their keep get killed before they're purchased.

Also on your plate

• Actively hunting for operational gaps, and fixing them before they cause a problem.

• Front-line owner of People Ops tickets and questions from employees and managers across all three markets.

• Partnering with Legal and Operations so policies hold up under CLT, Mexican labor law, and US employment law.

• Run the annual open enrollment cycle, deadlines communicated, elections processed correctly, escalations handled — with no scramble in the final week.

• LOA processes are documented and applied consistently under US, Brazilian (CLT), and Mexican requirements, so a leave request never becomes a compliance question mid-process.

• Auditing existing HR workflows for where manual work can become automated, and building the business case to prioritize the fix.

• Supporting compensation cycles, performance review cycles, and org-chart changes with clean, accurate HRIS data behind them.

• Working directly with recruiting and finance so headcount, comp, and systems data stay reconciled instead of drifting apart.

• Ensuring Compliance requirements across our jurisdictions are met, on time.

What you bring

• 4+ years in People Operations or HR Operations, ideally at a tech company that grew fast enough to outgrow its own processes.

• Hands-on HRIS administration, you've configured workflows and fields yourself.

• A track record of turning a manual, inconsistent process into a documented, standardized one, and getting others to actually follow it.

• Experience working across more than one country or legal jurisdiction.

• Bilingual in English and Spanish or, English and Portuguese.

• Based in Palo Alto, CA, with 3 days per week in our Palo Alto office.

How you work

• Builder. You look at a process and ask whether it should exist at all, or exist differently.

• Curious by default. New HR tech, a workflow that seems clunky, a policy nobody can explain, you dig until you understand it, then you fix or replace it.

• Standardizes without flattening. You build one consistent way of working across markets.

Nice to have

• Experience at a technology company.

• Exposure to Brazilian or Mexican labor law and statutory benefits administration.

Compensation & benefits

The expected salary range for this role is $128,000 to $135,000 per year. Actual compensation will depend on experience, skills, and qualifications.

• Equity

• Medical, dental and vision

• 15 days paid time off

• Learning and development budget

Equal opportunity

Tensec is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.

Tensec is a diverse and inclusive company committed to growing a diverse and inclusive team. We invite people of all backgrounds and identities to apply. Additionally, we encourage everyone to share which pronouns you wish for us to use when addressing you (i.e., she/her, he/him, they/them).

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities. Please let your recruiter know if you require an accommodation during the application or interview process.

Even if you don't meet 100% of the qualifications, we encourage you to apply.