Director of Human Resources

Trunk Space Storage; Dallas (TX); On-site; USD 155,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Trunk Space Storage, Dallas-based, seeks an experienced HR leader to own all HR for a multi-state team of stores, field and corporate staff. You will lead recruitment, employee relations, benefits administration and payroll, supported by AI tools and Paylocity.

You’ll partner with the CEO and Finance, shape AI-driven HR processes, ensure compliance across 11 states including California, and build a scalable HR operation as we expand stores and teams.

Qualifications

• Five to nine years of HR generalist experience in multi-site environments.
• Proven recruiting and employee relations experience across multiple states.
• Experience with payroll, benefits administration and compliance.
• Comfort with AI tools and driving change in HR processes.

Responsibilities

• Source and hire store managers and related roles; onboarding in Paylocity.
• Staff openings and transitions; set hiring bar with Operations.
• Own HR operations, payroll and compliance with brokers and legal partners.
• Lead AI HR initiatives and tools roadmap across recruiting, onboarding and analytics.
• Manage risk across states including California; ensure compliance and policy alignment.

Skills

HR leadership

Recruiting

Employee relations

Payroll

AI in HR

Compliance

Tools

Paylocity

Claude

ChatGPT

HRIS

Job description

Description

LOCATION: Dallas–Fort Worth, about 20% travel to our stores.

TYPE: Full-time, exempt.

COMPENSATION: $155,000–$180,000 base, depending on experience. No bonus program today; we pay a strong base and say so up front.

SCOPE: All of HR for a multi-state team of store, field and corporate employees. You own it and you do it.

START: As soon as we find the right person.

The role

Trunk Space Storage runs 22 self-storage facilities in 11 states for institutional real-estate investors, and we're adding stores quickly. Every store has one dedicated manager who owns it end to end, backed by our Remote Operations Center and a growing set of AI agents. The person in the store is the business, so the person who finds, hires and keeps those managers is one of the most important people in the company. That's this job.

We're further along on AI than most companies our size: every corporate employee works in Claude, more than a dozen AI tools are live across the business, and using AI is part of everyone's review. HR is next. You don't need to code on day one, though with Claude Code and Codex that bar keeps dropping. You need to know where AI is taking HR, find what already works, and get it into use here.

You’ll start alongside our Chief Administrative Officer, who built the current function, with the plan that you lead HR for the whole company, working directly with our CEO.

What you’ll own

Store-manager recruiting (most of the job)

• Personally source and hire store managers, relief managers and the occasional corporate role: outreach, screening, scheduling, offers, background checks and onboarding in Paylocity.
• Staff new-store openings and portfolio transitions, where many managers start the same day. Outside recruiting support is available for the largest surges.
• Set the hiring bar with Operations and coach hiring managers on interviewing.
• Track time-to-fill, source quality and 90-day retention, and act on them.

HR operations and risk

You are the HR department, with brokers, payroll and legal partners behind you rather than a team.

• Employee relations: first call for managers and employees, investigations, discipline and separations, handbook and state policies.
• Risk: recognize when something could become a problem across 11 states including California (wage and hour, leave, on-site manager housing, terminations, AI-in-hiring rules). Use AI to research the path forward, notice when the answer looks incomplete, and bring it to our General Counsel or outside counsel. You don't have to know the full answer; you have to know there's a question.
• Benefits, 401(k) and payroll: administer the plans, run open enrollment with our broker, and oversee biweekly multi-state payroll in Paylocity with Finance.
• Performance and training: run the review cycle, keep AI use part of how we evaluate everyone, and keep onboarding and compliance training current.
• Bring employees from acquired and transitioned stores onto our pay, benefits and policies cleanly.

AI in HR

Think clearly about where AI is taking HR and recruiting, and make it real here.

• Own the roadmap for our AI recruiting stack (résumé screening, passive sourcing, scheduling, role-play interviews) and work with our tech team to build it.
• Scout AI-native tools for recruiting, onboarding, analytics and compliance. Judge them by one test: do they get a better manager into an open store faster?
• Work in Claude (Cowork and Code) every day. Build skills, and eventually programs, as you get comfortable. You'll have a tools budget and a CEO who wants to hear what you tried.
• Set the guardrails: human review of hiring decisions, bias monitoring, candidate privacy, AI-in-hiring compliance.

What success looks like

Twelve months in, we’ll know this worked if:

• Open stores get a strong manager in weeks, not months, and candidates go from application to interview the same day. Today it takes one to two weeks, and we lose people in the gap.
• New store managers are still here and performing at 90 days, and hiring managers trust the people you send them.
• We’ve opened and transitioned new stores fully staffed on day one.
• No compliance surprises: audits, filings and state requirements are handled before anyone asks.
• Managers and employees come to you first, and the answer is fast and right.
• At least a few AI tools are in daily use in HR, the manual steps in recruiting are gone, and you can show the time they saved.

Requirements

What we need

• Five to nine years of HR generalist experience in a multi-site, hourly business, with hands-on time in recruiting, employee relations, benefits administration and payroll.
• You’ve personally recruited frontline, hourly, multi-site teams (retail, restaurants, convenience, fitness, storage, property management or similar) and you’re good at proactive sourcing.
• Enough multi-state employment exposure, California included, to recognize risk when you see it, research it well, and know when to call a lawyer.
• A point of view on where AI is taking HR, daily use of tools like Claude or ChatGPT, and at least one process you’ve already changed with them.
• Comfortable being strategist and doer in a lean, fast company. No one hands you your day.
• Based in Dallas–Fort Worth.

Nice to have

• Paylocity, or another HRIS and payroll platform you know deeply.
• New-location openings, acquisitions or portfolio transitions.
• Self-storage, real estate or multi-unit retail background.
• Something you’ve built with AI: an agent, a workflow, a custom GPT or a Claude skill.