Manager of People Operations

About Karbon

Karbon is a globally recognized, AI-driven practice management platform built for accounting firms. Its cloud-based software helps tens of thousands of accounting professionals collaborate more effectively and work with greater efficiency every day. The company serves customers in 40 countries and operates with a distributed workforce across the US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Philippines. Karbon is well funded, ranked #1 on G2, growing quickly, and known for a people-first culture, backed by Great Place To Work® certification and a place on Fortune magazine’s Best Small Workplaces™ list.

The People team is a high-performing group with a strong commitment to Karbonites and the company’s values. The business is seeking an operations leader who is naturally AI-native, designs scalable systems, and sees agentic workflows as the future of modern People Operations. Reporting to the VP of People, this role will own the operational foundation behind hiring, onboarding, and supporting employees across six countries, with a path to expand into leadership of a broader pillar within the People function.

What This Role Is Built For

This is an unusual opportunity for someone who looks at a manual process and immediately thinks about which agent should handle it before deciding which person should. The right candidate does not merely use AI tools; they design the workflows, build the agents, and create the systems that allow a lean People team to function like a much larger one. The role blends multi-country HR compliance expertise with prompt engineering, integrations, and agent orchestration.

This is not an administrative coordination role or a ticket-resolution role. The focus is on designing how the work should happen, not personally completing tasks where an agent can do the job instead. The position owns the operational engine for People Ops, includes a meaningful TA component such as forecasting, reporting, and data integrity, and also carries benefits ownership. Success will be measured by how much of that engine can operate without human intervention.

Key Responsibilities

The person in this role will shape and continuously improve the full People Ops and TA operating model, making AI agents and agentic workflows the default execution layer for onboarding, offboarding, employee lifecycle updates, and the recruiting process.

They will design and deploy agents to handle recurring operational work from start to finish, including onboarding task coordination, compliance documentation, offer letter creation, interview scheduling, and first-line employee inquiries.

They will use AI to oversee compliance across six operating regions, building automated checks that identify risk, highlight regulatory changes, and keep entity-level obligations current without relying on manual tracking.

They will create AI-supported reporting and analytics for the People and TA functions, including live dashboards, hiring funnel insight, and operational health metrics that the VP of People and functional leads can use without needing to request them.

They will run the HRIS, ATS, and wider People technology stack as one connected, AI-augmented system, assessing new tools based on their readiness for agents and API-first architecture rather than only feature comparisons.

They will support the TA function through pipeline forecasting, recruiting data quality, and funnel reporting, while partnering with hiring managers to build AI into the way hiring data is tracked and interpreted.

They will own US benefits administration and vendor management, using AI to simplify open enrollment, automate eligibility tracking, and surface usage insights that can guide future benefits decisions.

They will use AI to improve the employee experience across the lifecycle, anticipating friction points early and putting agents or workflows in place to resolve them before they become support tickets.

They will lead AI-based process documentation and knowledge management for People Ops, making sure every workflow is captured in a format that both humans and agents can use.

They will partner with Finance, IT, and Legal through AI-assisted workflows for cross-functional operations such as headcount planning, system access setup, and contract or policy management.

They will coach the broader People team on AI fluency, agent design, and automation practices, helping model what an AI-forward People Operations function should look like in practice.

They will also own AI governance for the People function, ensuring agents and AI tools are used in a compliant, ethical way that protects sensitive employee and candidate data across global operations.

What We’re Looking For

Applicants should bring 5 or more years of progressive experience in People Operations or HR Operations, along with some leadership or team lead exposure.

Experience in SaaS or another fast-growing tech environment is required, along with an understanding of how a global, multi-entity People function operates and where processes typically break down as a company scales.

Deep practical experience with AI tools, agent builders, and agentic workflows is essential. The ideal person has already built, deployed, and maintained agents that perform real operational work rather than just experimenting with them.

Strong technical instincts are important, including comfort with APIs, integrations, automation tools such as Zapier, Make, or n8n, and prompt engineering as a core capability rather than a side skill.

Experience with multi-country HR operations is strongly preferred, especially across some combination of the US, UK, Australia/New Zealand, Canada, and the Philippines.

The role calls for someone who can redesign operating processes from the ground up instead of simply improving them step by step, with a clear preference for automation over adding headcount.

Candidates should have working knowledge of US benefits administration, including open enrollment, carrier management, and core compliance concepts such as ACA and ERISA.

They should also have practical understanding of HR compliance across several jurisdictions, with sound judgment about when AI can own a task and when human review is necessary.

Strong data fluency is expected, including the ability to build operational dashboards, interpret funnel metrics naturally, and use AI to analyze information more deeply and quickly than standard tools allow.

The ideal hire is a systems thinker who can hold the full operating picture across People Ops, TA, and Benefits at the same time and design how those functions connect.

A player-coach mindset is important: someone senior enough to work independently, willing to build and ship work directly, and motivated to grow into a larger leadership role as the company scales.

High integrity, strong emotional intelligence, and discretion when handling sensitive employee and candidate information are essential.

There should also be genuine enthusiasm for the direction AI is taking the People function, along with a clear point of view on what an AI-native HR operation should be.

Benefits and Perks

Employees gain exposure to global operations across the USA, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Canada, and the Philippines.

The benefits package includes paid flexible time off with an encouraged three-week annual use target, company-paid medical coverage for the employee and eligible spouse/partner and dependents, and company-paid dental and vision coverage for the employee and eligible spouse/partner and dependents.

Additional benefits include fully company-funded short- and long-term disability, fully company-paid life insurance, a 401(k) with company match, a flexible spending account, up to eight weeks of paid parental leave, and a work-from-home stipend.

Karbon also emphasizes learning from an experienced, high-performing team, working in a collaborative and team-oriented culture that values diversity, development, and regular feedback, and joining a fast-growing company that prefers to promote high performers from within.

Compensation, Equal Opportunity, and Hiring Notes

The estimated base salary range for this role is USD 120,000 to USD 130,000 per year. The total compensation package may also include a target bonus and, for some roles, a competitive equity grant, along with generous benefits. Final compensation depends on factors such as location, years of experience, skills, and other business needs.

Karbon encourages candidates who do not meet every requirement to apply if they believe they may still be a strong fit. The company states that it hires and rewards based on capability and performance and does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, lifestyle, age, educational background, national origin, religion, physical or cognitive ability, or other diversity dimensions that may affect inclusion.

Reasonable adjustments or accommodations can be requested during the recruitment process and employment by contacting people.support@karbonhq.com for a confidential discussion. Agency referrals are not being accepted for this position; direct applications from interested candidates are preferred.