People Operations Lead

Helsing; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 125,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation support

Learning allowance

Health & wellness programs

Social events & allowances

VSOP options

Job summary

Helsing is seeking a senior People Operations leader to simplify and scale our global People Operations. You will design end-to-end processes, reduce friction, and build a capable, autonomous team across our European footprint.

You will work closely with HRIS, Payroll, Workplace, and Finance teams to deliver a streamlined employee experience, balancing automation with prudent human judgement. A background in fast-growing or complex organisations will be highly valued.

Qualifications

• Built or significantly improved People Operations within a fast-growing or complex organisation.
• Redesigned processes rather than simply inherited and maintained them.
• Demonstrate strong judgement about when to standardise and when local variation is genuinely necessary.
• Experience operating across multiple countries (Germany, UK, France) is valuable.
• Developed and grew operational teams, enabling independent work.
• Collaborate with senior stakeholders while staying close to operations.

Responsibilities

• Design an end-to-end People Operations process landscape across the full employee lifecycle.
• Identify and resolve ownership or process clarity gaps.
• Build a scalable global operating model with necessary local flexibility.
• Establish service ownership, SLAs, and escalation paths across the function.
• Identify automation opportunities with HRIS & Systems team to improve speed and accuracy.
• Create self-service solutions that preserve essential human judgement.
• Use data to identify bottlenecks and drive improvements.
• Guide thoughtful adoption of AI tools in People Operations.
• Oversee lifecycle admin, onboarding/offboarding, HRIS data, payroll inputs, mobility, and documentation.
• Give ownership and accountability to the People Operations team.

Skills

People Operations

Process redesign

Cross-country collaboration

Stakeholder management

Tools

HRIS

Workflow automation

Service delivery tooling

Job description

Who We Are

Helsing is a defence AI company. Our mission is to protect our democracies. We aim to achieve technological leadership, so that open societies can continue to make sovereign decisions and control their ethical standards.

Helsing is a defence AI company. Our mission is to protect our democracies. We aim to achieve technological leadership, so that open societies can continue to make sovereign decisions and control their ethical standards.

As democracies, we believe we have a special responsibility to be thoughtful about the development and deployment of powerful technologies like AI. We take this responsibility seriously.

We are an ambitious and committed team of engineers, AI specialists and customer-facing programme managers. We are looking for mission-driven people to join our European teams – and apply their skills to solve the most complex and impactful problems. We embrace an open and transparent culture that welcomes healthy debates on the use of technology in defence, its benefits, and its ethical implications.

The role

This role sits at the intersection of People operations, systems, automation, service delivery and employee experience. You will take an existing global People Operations setup and make it simpler, more reliable and more scalable as the company grows.

This is not a role for someone who wants to maintain established HR processes. We are looking for someone who can understand where the current model is creating friction, determine what genuinely needs to change, and then build the systems, processes and team capability required to solve it.

You will work closely with our People Operations, HRIS & Systems, Payroll, Workplace, Business Partnering and Finance teams.

The day-to-day

• Design an end-to-end People Operations process landscape across the full employee lifecycle
• Identify and resolve areas where ownership, processes or controls are unclear or unnecessarily complex
• Build a scalable global operating model while enabling local flexibility where genuinely required
• Establish clear service ownership, service levels and escalation paths across the function
• Partner with the HRIS & Systems team to identify automation opportunities that improve speed, accuracy and employee experience
• Build self-service solutions that improve experience without removing important human judgement
• Use data and operational insight to identify bottlenecks and drive continuous improvement
• Guide thoughtful adoption of AI tools across People Operations
• Own and improve employee lifecycle administration, onboarding, offboarding, HRIS data processes, service delivery ticketing, payroll inputs, mobility and relocation processes, and documentation
• Give the People Operations team clear ownership and accountability over their areas
• Develop People Operations Partners who can operate independently and confidently
• Create visibility on team priorities, commitments, risks and performance
• Shift the team from reactive support towards proactive operational ownership

You should apply if you

• Have built or significantly improved People Operations within a fast-growing or complex organisation
• Have redesigned processes rather than simply inherited and maintained them
• Demonstrate strong judgement about when to standardise and when local variation is genuinely necessary
• Have operated across multiple countries, with exposure to Germany, the UK and France particularly valuable
• Have developed and grew operational teams, building their ability to work independently
• Collaborate effectively with senior stakeholders while staying close enough to operations to understand what is actually happening

Nice to Have

• Experience with HRIS, workflow automation and service delivery tooling
• Experience defining service levels, controls and operational metrics
• Experience working with external payroll or other service providersExposure to People Operations at scale within a comparable environment

Join Helsing and work with world-leading experts in their fields

• Helsing’s work is important. You’ll be directly contributing to the protection of democratic countries while balancing both ethical and geopolitical concerns
• The work is unique. We operate in a domain that has highly unusual technical requirements and constraints, and where robustness, safety, and ethical considerations are vital. You will face unique Engineering and AI challenges that make a meaningful impact in the world
• Our work frequently takes us right up to the state of the art in technical innovation, be it reinforcement learning, distributed systems, generative AI, or deployment infrastructure. The defence industry is entering the most exciting phase of the technological development curve. Advances in our field of world are not incremental: Helsing is part of, and often leading, historic leaps forward
• In our domain, success is a matter of order-of-magnitude improvements and novel capabilities. This means we take bets, aim high, and focus on big opportunities. Despite being a relatively young company, Helsing has already been selected for multiple significant government contracts
• We actively encourage healthy, proactive, and diverse debate internally about what we do and how we choose to do it. Teams and individual engineers are trusted (and encouraged) to practise responsible autonomy and critical thinking, and to focus on outcomes, not conformity. At Helsing you will have a say in how we (and you!) work, the opportunity to engage on what does and doesn’t work, and to take ownership of aspects of our culture that you care deeply about

What We Offer

• Competitive salary and VSOP options
• Relocation support: up to €2,500 and 4 weeks temporary accommodation
• Learning: €500/£450 yearly allowance
• Health & wellness: gym membership and mental health support (Nilo.health)
• Social: regularly company events and monthly social allowances
• Enhanced parental leave: 22 weeks fully paid for primary caregivers & 6 weeks for secondary caregivers.
• Family support: 5 days of paid family emergency leave, 100% remote work option during pregnancy and phased return to work

These are the core benefits across all locations, there may be additional benefits in certain locations.

Note: We operate in an industry where women, as well as other minority groups, are systematically under-represented. We encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet all the listed qualifications; ability and impact cannot be summarised in a few bullet points.

Helsing is an equal opportunities employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability or gender identity. Please do not submit personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, data concerning your health, or data concerning your sexual orientation.

Helsing's Candidate Privacy and Confidentiality Regime can be found here.