HR & Payroll Operations Lead, Descartes Underwriting
Offers bonus
More information about location
3+ days a week in office
Parametric insurance for climate, cyber & emerging risks
Job no longer available
Parametric insurance for climate, cyber & emerging risks
201-500 employees
Job no longer available
Offers bonus
More information about location
3+ days a week in office
201-500 employees
Company mission
To help companies and communities build resilience in a world at risk.
Role
Who you are
- Please feel free to apply even if you don’t meet every single requirement:
- You are graduated from a Business school/academic institutions/universities with a specialization in HR and equivalent
- You experienced from 5 to 10 years of experience in HR after graduation
- You are recognized for :
- Your rigor
- Your problem solving skills ; a bias for action and delivery
- Your strong interest in labor law and payroll issues
- Your practical mindset and eagerness to automate and scale thanks to tools
- Your ability to work in a true international context, with different cultures, but also different regulations and law
- You have significant experience in an HR department, with ideally a focus in HR Operations (“administration du personnel”)
- You are at ease, either in a fast-paced, high-growth environment where agility and automation were critical, or in a regulated industry (such as banking or insurance) where you developed strong skills in navigating compliance and risk management functions effectively
- You have ideally already been managing an international scope, taking into account local specificities and identifying the right partners in each country
- You are fluent in French and English (written and verbal communication)
- You recognize yourself in values like: excellence, diversity, humility and eagerness to learn
What the job involves
- As HR & Payroll Operations Lead, you will join our dynamic and collaborative People team, currently made up of 8 dedicated professionals based in Paris and New York
- They are committed to driving the company's success, passionate about fostering diversity, and constantly eager to learn and grow
- The team is being expanded around a Chief People Officer who joined in mid-2024, holds a position on the Executive Committee, and drives the People strategy
- The People team's mission is twofold - both equally important:
- Support Descartes growth and resilience globally
- Bring the best possible experience for all candidates and employees, in all our locations
- The People team's strategic objectives:
- Build the right People strategy and deploy the team effectively
- Streamline the experience, while ensuring compliance and scale
- Attract and hire top talents
- Enable employees to thrive and grow
- Empower managers to excel in their roles and create resilient organizations
- Your responsibilities will include, for France but also for some other countries:
- Payroll Operations:
- Manage monthly payroll, via external payroll providers you’ll lead the relationship with
- Ensure social taxes are properly calculated, controlled and paid, in relation with Finance
- Manage complex compensation set-ups in line with local laws and regulations (e.g. benefits in kind like company cars, leave subrogation)
- Track employees’ benefit allowances (e.g. transportation allowance, meal plan)
- Deploy effective communication strategies regarding employee payroll, including writing (or contribute to writing) relevant documentation that will guide employees who have questions about their payroll
- Compensation & Benefits process implementation
- Identify compensation and benefits partners, negotiate contract terms and set-up partnerships
- Manage all compensation & benefits initiatives including deferred compensation (e.g. profit sharing, employee savings schemes), fringe benefits (e.g. pension schemes, health insurance) and benefits in kind (company car, phones, housing allowance, etc.)
- Support top management in calculating annual bonus and wage increase schemes and delivering goal settings letters to employees annually
- Scale and compliance:
- Contribute to achieving positive outcomes in internal audit reports and control assessments of the HR processes
- For any new hub or business Descartes would develop (ex.: creation of a new country from scratch, acquired company), contribute to build the HR Operations
- Continuously improve our operations by simplifying when possible, automating where feasible, and ensuring reliability in everything we do
- Manage or support HR, Payroll, Compensation and Benefits aspects for new joiners and leavers
- Documente HR processes, either for employees or for internal purposes
- HR data, tools and reporting:
- Enhance and maintain HR databases (Excel and HRIS tool), work with your People colleagues on guaranteeing data consistency
- Contribute to choosing and implementing our future global HRIS
- Produce appropriate reports and KPIs for internal and external parties (e.g. investors, internal leadership)
- Support and liaise with Finance on compensation-related reporting, budgeting and controlling (e.g. pension provision, budget forecasts)
Our take
The corporate insurance market is undergoing a momentous shift driven by a changing climate, the growing impact of natural catastrophes, and a rise in emerging risks. Climate change has become a real risk to businesses - one nature report, for example, found that the US alone could lose over $500 billion across 22 sectors if rising global temperature predictions materialise. The need for effective corporate insurance has never been higher.
Descartes Underwriting is looking to revolutionise how we approach insurance. Taking on one of the insurance industry’s traditional methods - catastrophe (CAT) risk modelling - Descartes is leveraging new data sources and fusing them with a host of AI algorithms. This provides what it describes as a “product offering which covers the full spectrum of natural catastrophes and emerging risk exposures.” Its AI-driven parametric insurance model is highly disruptive, and has proven highly successful - just a few years after its founding, Descartes had already become the leading InsurTech player worldwide.
Following major funding, Descartes is looking to scale up its approach to corporate and public entity risk exposures, growing its technology platform, expanding into new lines of business and targeting larger deals. With an existing client base spanning hundreds of corporations including a host of Fortune 500 companies, Descartes looks set for big things in the coming years.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
56% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 3 rounds)
Jan 2022
$120m
SERIES B
Sep 2020
$18.5m
SERIES A
Total funding: $140.9m
Company HQ
Plaine-Monceau, Paris, France
Leadership
Tanguy Touffut
(Co-Founder & CEO)Previously Global Head of Parametric Insurance at AXA Corporate Solutions, then CEO of AXA Global Parametrics.
Sebastien Piguet
(Co-Founder & Chief Underwriting Officer)Previously Head of On-Demand Insurance Products at AXA Global Parametrics.
Kevin Dedieu
(Co-Founder & Chief Scientific Officer)Previously a Senior Consultant at MPG Partners. Also a visiting lecturer at École Polytechnique.
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