Director of People Operations, Chainguard
$204-240k
+ Receive stock options upon hire and promotion. Plus, you can participate in secondary offerings and have 10 years to exercise your options (yes, you read that correctly: 10 years!).
More information about location
Software supply chain security
Be an early applicant
Software supply chain security
501-1000 employees
Be an early applicant
$204-240k
+ Receive stock options upon hire and promotion. Plus, you can participate in secondary offerings and have 10 years to exercise your options (yes, you read that correctly: 10 years!).
More information about location
501-1000 employees
Company mission
To make the software supply chain secure by default.
Role
Who you are
- 8–10+ years in HR/People Operations, including 3+ years in a leadership/management capacity
- Proven ownership of HRIS strategy — has led an implementation, migration, or major optimization (Workday, Rippling, ADP, or similar)
- Experience owning the full employee lifecycle: onboarding, offboarding, org changes, data integrity, and process design
- Background managing HR compliance operations — I-9s, leave administration, policy administration, audits
- Experience standing up or scaling a people ops function in a high-growth SaaS or startup environment
- International experience required, particularly across EMEA; experience in Japan, Singapore, or South America is a strong plus
- Direct experience opening new international entities and standing up HR compliance and operations in new countries
- Experience partnering with or managing an Employer of Record (EOR) for international employees
- A collaborative, solutions-oriented approach — this role needs to be a "yes, how can I help" partner to the business, not a bottleneck or blocker
- Strong track record managing and developing a team
- Comfort operating with some ambiguity and building process where it doesn't yet exist
- If your experience is close but doesn't fulfill all requirements, please apply. We're building the best team in technology and are focused on hiring "Chainguardians" with unique backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences
What the job involves
- The role, in a nutshell: We're looking for a Director of People Operations to help scale our HR operations function as Chainguard grows and expands internationally
- This role will lead our People Operations team, and will own the core employee lifecycle processes — onboarding, offboarding, compliance training, and job changes — as well as our expansion into new countries
- We're currently opening entities in the UK and Canada, with Germany to follow, and expect to open several more countries next year
- This role will be central to that effort, working cross-functionally with Finance and Legal to figure out how we operate compliantly, and how we pay and support people, in every country we enter
- Own and scale Chainguard's core employee lifecycle processes, including onboarding, offboarding, compliance training, and updates for promotions and job changes
- Lead the People Operations team, currently one manager with two direct reports
- Make HR Operations more visible and accessible to employees
- Lead the operational work of opening new legal entities internationally, including the UK, Canada, and Germany, and additional countries planned for next year
- Own the ongoing maintenance of HR operations and compliance across all countries where Chainguard operates
- Partner cross-functionally with Finance and Legal to navigate the compliance, payroll, and legal constraints of operating in each new country
- Manage and expand our partnership with our Employer of Record (EOR) provider, given our reliance on remote employees across roughly 19 countries
- Build scalable People Operations processes, templates, and resources as the function and company grow
- Bring strong AI fluency to the function, using AI to design smarter, more efficient People Operations processes and improve the employee experience
- Chainguard is in the middle of an ambitious international expansion, and our People Operations function needs to scale right alongside it
- This role will be central to that work building the processes and infrastructure to support employees well, in every country we operate in, while also making HR Operations a more helpful, visible partner to the business day to day
- You'll have real ownership over how People Operations scales globally, with the opportunity to build and grow a team as the company continues to expand
Our take
Developers rely on open source code and apps in their day to day work, but when the provenance of the code is unknown this creates potential weaknesses that cybercriminals can exploit. Chainguard exists to build security into the coding supply chain by making it possible for companies to enforce security policies based on auditable signatures baked into the code.
In the wake of huge cyber attacks, software supply chain security has been an area of major focus. However, most of this has surrounded the scanning and detection of threats. Chainguard's approach comes from the other end of the process, focusing on building security into the software itself.
Built by former engineers who are aware of developer workloads, Chainguard is designed to be easily installed and integrated into existing automation systems. The company has secured substantial funding, the latest of which will support more aggressive product and R&D spending as it looks to further boost sales.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
55% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)
Oct 2025
$280m
GROWTH EQUITY VC
Apr 2025
$356m
SERIES D
Total funding: $892m
Company benefits
- Equity/stock options
- Unlimited PTO
- Remote work with flexible coworking and team meetup opportunities
- Home office and internet stipend
- 100% health/dental/vision insurance coverage for you and your family
Company HQ
Everest, Kirkland, WA
Leadership
Dan Lorenc
(CEO & Co-Founder)Before co-founding Chainguard was a Software Engineer at Google, Disqus and Microsoft.
Kim Lewandowski
(CSO & Co-Founder)Prior to co-founding Chainguard was a Product Manager with Google. Before that was the Head of Product & Engineering at Brit + Co and the founder of Spotwag.
Matthew Moore
(CTO & Co-Founder)Was a Software Engineer at VMware, Google and Microsoft.
Ville Aikas
(Distinguished Engineer & Co-founder)Was a Senior Staff Engineer at VMware and a Software Engineer for Google and the University of Washingtom. Was previously Owner at VA Systems.
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