People Operations Partner, North America
Reaktor · New York City, New York
We're hiring someone to run people operations for Reaktor in the US and Canada.
About 40 Reaktorians work in North America, roughly 20 of them in and around New York and the rest remotely. At that size there is no local HR team to delegate to. You are the local People operation. You make payroll land, contracts hold up, onboarding work, benefits function, immigration cases move, and employee data stay accurate, week after week, without anyone having to check. You own the local experience.
You won't be doing this alone, and you won't be doing all of it. Reaktor's People and Culture organization is global, and it deliberately separates local operations from business partnering and program design. Understanding that split is the difference between thriving in this role and being frustrated by it.
Where this role sits
Three parts of the global People and Culture organization matter to you.
- Business Unit People Partners own the strategic people agenda for their business units. They work with business leadership on organizational design, workforce planning and succession. When a business unit leader has a strategic people question, the People Partner owns the answer. You bring the local facts, the legal context, and the practical options that make that answer workable on the ground.
- Centers of Expertise, including Talent Acquisition, Total Rewards, and Talent Development, design and run the global programs. They set the compensation framework, the performance cycle, the hiring and onboarding process, and the learning offering. You will contribute your local expertise to their development, and make them run correctly in the US and Canada. You’ll spot where local law or market practice breaks the global design, and feed that back so the next version holds up better.
- People Operations (which we call “HUG”) owns process, systems, data, and service delivery across every location. This is your home team: a global group of People Operations colleagues who share global practices, solve problems together, and continuously develop and align our ways of working across locations. You bring North America into the global standard, and you take the global standard back out into North America.
That leaves you with a clear job. Reporting to and supported by our Head of People & Office Operations Manager located in Finland, you will own the operational reality of employment in the US and Canada, and be the person the global function trusts to tell it what is actually happening here.
What you'll own
The employee lifecycle in North America, end to end in execution terms. Pre-boarding and onboarding, employment contracts and amendments, leave and time off, performance cycle administration, offboarding, and the documentation behind all of it.
- Local compliance and management of People & Culture team vendors. Payroll coordination, immigration and visa cases, benefits administration and renewals, Reaktorians' compensation. You manage the partner relationships, hold them to their service levels, audit and (re)negotiate, and escalate when they slip.
- Employee data in the global HR system, HiBob. Accurate joiners, movers, and leavers, correct reporting lines and cost centers, and terminations processed on time. Data quality in North America is yours, and the global function depends on it being right.
- First line support for the North American team. Most questions land with you first: policy, benefits, payroll, leave, process. You answer what you can, route what you can't, and know the difference.
- Employment relations execution alongside the People Partner. Warnings, performance improvement processes, and terminations get handled together. You bring US and Canadian legal grounding, documentation discipline, and a clear read of local risk. The People Partner leads the case.
- Local practice and process improvement. As you get to know the operation, you will see where our North American processes creak. You are expected to propose the fix, build it, and document it, not just report the problem. Where a fix affects the global process, you take it into the HR Operations team and work it through with colleagues in Helsinki, Amsterdam, Lisbon, and Tokyo. You will also actively contribute to developing and aligning global People Operations processes across locations, bringing the North American perspective while working toward shared ways of working wherever that makes sense.
- Guidance for colleagues. You are the trusted, first point of contact for any of our team across North America, for any employment-related matter. We want Reaktorians to feel that they can turn to you. New joiners and established Reaktorians all over the world come to you for it, and part of the job is making sure that knowledge doesn't live only in your head.
- The New York office. Facilities, suppliers, health and safety, and the practical things that make a workplace function. Plus internal events and the parts of the culture that only exist because someone organizes them.
What this role is - and isn't
We would rather say this now than at the offer stage.
- You will not own People strategy for North America. You will not design the compensation framework, the performance model, or the talent strategy. You will not design global People programs, and you will not manage a team.
- What you will have is unusual autonomy over a real operation, direct access to global leadership and every Center of Expertise in the People & Culture team, and a seat in the conversations where the global standard gets set. If the appeal is owning something completely and being trusted to run it well, this is for you.
Level and scope
This is a Level 12 role in Reaktor's job architecture, our senior specialist level. In practice that means a trusted expert who works independently on demanding assignments, takes clear ownership of quality, proposes solutions rather than escalating problems, contributes to how the function's processes develop, and guides colleagues on their area of expertise. Decisions that reach beyond North America get made together with the global team.
What you'll bring
- Around five or more years in HR generalist, People Operations, or HR administration roles in the US.
- Working knowledge of US employment law and practice across multiple states, plus enough Canadian employment law to run a small population competently or the appetite to build it quickly. Concretely: FLSA classification, at-will employment and termination risk, FMLA and state leave programs, multi-state payroll and registration, I-9 and work authorization, and the Canadian equivalents in the provinces where we employ people.
- Experience managing external partners. Payroll providers, immigration counsel, employment counsel, benefits brokers, and accountants.
- Real comfort with administrative precision. This job includes a lot of detail, and the detail is the point. Data that is nearly right creates work for everyone downstream.
- The judgment to handle confidential matters properly, and the discipline to document them.
- The ability to take a vague situation and turn it into facts, options, stakeholders, and a recommendation.
- Comfort operating as the only People person in the room, in a flat organization, across a six to eight hour time difference from most of your peers located in Europe.
- Fluent working English. Any additional language spoken across our offices is a bonus, not a requirement.
- Useful but not required: experience in consulting, technology, or another expert-led business; experience in a local office of an international company; experience adapting global HR processes to a local market; experience with immigration and relocation.
How we work
Reaktor has been building digital products since 2000, from Helsinki, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Tokyo, and New York. Our clients range from Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, and Epic Games, as well as Adidas and the Finnish Defense Forces.
Hierarchy is light and decisions get made by the people closest to the work. That cuts both ways. You get freedom that most operational HR roles don't offer, and you're expected to use it without waiting for permission or a perfect plan.
Location, compensation and benefits
- Our New York City office, at least three days a week. The rest is flexible.
- $140,000 to $165,000 per year, depending on experience and skills.
- Benefits include 100% coverage on health, dental, and vision, including 50% on family + 6% matching 401k.
Applying
Send us a line. You don't need a resume if you don't have one ready, so a LinkedIn profile, a website, or a portfolio works fine.
We want Reaktor to be a place that values people for the whole of who they are, and we encourage applications from every background. If you meet most of what's above and not all of it, apply anyway.