Senior People Operations Partner, Sofar Ocean
$130-155k
+ Equity
More information about location
4+ days a week in office
Ocean data monitoring
Posted today
Ocean data monitoring
101-200 employees
Posted today
$130-155k
+ Equity
More information about location
4+ days a week in office
101-200 employees
Company mission
To connect the world's oceans to the people who depend on them (all of us).
Role
Who you are
- Experience: 6+ years of progressive HR experience, with at least 3 years focused specifically on People Operations, ideally in a fast-growing startup environment
- Location: Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, able to be onsite at Pier 28 4 days/week
- Technical Skills: Advanced administrator experience with modern HR platforms (Rippling, Ashby, Slack, or similar) and strong Excel/Google Sheets skills for data analysis
- Legal Knowledge: Deep working knowledge of California employment law, wage-and-hour rules, and leave administration
- Education/Certifications: Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Business, or a related field. SHRM-SCP or SPHR is a plus, not a requirement
- What we need most: someone who takes ownership without hand-holding, sweats the details that others miss, moves with urgency, and genuinely cares about the day-to-day experience of the people around them
What the job involves
- We're looking for a Senior People Operations Manager who can own that infrastructure end to end: build (some of) it, run it, and improve it without needing to be told what's broken
- This is a highly autonomous role. You'll be trusted to identify gaps, prioritize what matters, and execute with minimal oversight
- It also demands real attention to detail: payroll, compliance, and employee data don't tolerate sloppiness, and small errors here erode trust fast. And it requires a sense of urgency: when someone's leave, pay, or onboarding is on the line, "eventually" isn't good enough!
- Every process you build touches a real person's experience of working at Sofar. This role is as much about protecting the culture and wellness of every Sofarer as it is about operational excellence
- HR Infrastructure & Technology: Own and optimize our HR systems (Rippling, Ashby, Slack, and related tools), ensuring data integrity, building automation where manual work creates friction, and producing People analytics leadership can actually use
- Compliance & Risk Management: Maintain rigorous compliance with federal, California, and San Francisco labor law (FMLA/CFRA, SF HCSO, FLSA). Lead audit readiness, including SOC 2 or SOX documentation as needed
- Total Rewards & Payroll: Partner with finance and external vendors on payroll processing, benefits administration, and open enrollment, catching discrepancies before they become problems
- Employee Lifecycle & Operations: Run onboarding, internal mobility, leaves of absence, and off-boarding cleanly and consistently. Support the ongoing transition of our international team members to direct-hire employment as we stand up new entities abroad
- Process Optimization: Continuously look for administrative friction and remove it. Draft clear SOPs and keep the employee handbook current, treating documentation as a way to make the People function more autonomous, not less
Our take
Drastically changing climates are one of the foremost issues of our time. As we work to limit the impact of this crisis, we need trustworthy data to see how these changes have manifested, and what trajectory our world is on. This is where Solar Ocean comes in, with its global network of ocean-monitoring buoys.
Sofar operates the largest network of its kind, with thousands of solar-powered ‘spotters’ across the world’s oceans delivering updates every day. Its product is used primarily by climate scientists, but also has important applications in shipping, weather forecasting and maritime research.
Even though Sofar's spotters aren’t as sophisticated as similar government-funded ones, the sheer scale of its data collection makes its forecasts far more accurate. The funding it has raised is supporting the further extension of its network and development of its data services.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
5% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 4 rounds)
Aug 2022
$39.4m
LATE VC
Nov 2021
$39m
SERIES B
Total funding: $85.7m
Company benefits
- Comprehensive health, vision, dental plan
- Volunteering program
- Home office stipend
- Hybrid work schedule (for most roles)
- Flexible time off (including World Oceans Day!)
- A strong internal community of ocean-lovers!
Company HQ
Mission District, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Evan Shapiro
(Co-Founder & CTO)Previously Co-founded Bad Rabbit Consulting, Spoondrift and Knit Health. At Knit Health they were also CTO, and at Spoondrift they worked as a Technical Architect.
Tim Janssen
(Co-Founder & CEO)Former Assistant Professor of Oceanography at San Francisco State University. They were a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Naval Postgraduate School, and also worked as an Independent Research Scientist and Principal Investigator.
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