People Operations Lead

Axle Labs; New York (NY); On-site; USD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation + equity

Unlimited vacation

Annual team offsite

Full benefits: medical/dental/vision

Bring pets to work

Job summary

Axle Labs is seeking a senior People Operations leader to own recruiting and people ops end-to-end. You will manage the entire hiring lifecycle across Engineering, Product, Sales, Partnerships, Deployment, and Corporate roles, while shaping onboarding, equity, and performance processes.

Expect a fast-paced, AI-forward culture with in-office work across NYC and Atlanta. You will build the function from zero, partner with leadership on compensation bands, and scale the organization with rigorous

Qualifications

• 5+ years across Talent/Recruiting and People/HR, with depth in both.
• Experience at a venture-backed startup in a hyper-growth phase.
• Hands-on operator who can close a candidate and design a comp band.
• Deep recruiting instincts across technical and GTM teams; external recruiters managed to results.
• Fluency with modern people tooling (ATS, HRIS) with a bias toward automation and AI.

Responsibilities

• Own all open requisitions across technical and go-to-market hiring, plus Corporate roles.
• Source, select, and manage external recruiting partners; ensure accountability to results.
• Administer and optimize Ashby ATS; automate workflows and funnel reporting.
• Design and run a standout candidate experience; fast, personal, consistent.
• Drive end-to-end offer process from leveling and compensation to close.
• Standardize interview panels and train interviewers to keep hiring bar high as we scale.
• Build Axle's employer brand and top-of-funnel pipeline through events and community initiatives, with a focus on New York (Chelsea), NYC and Atlanta offices.

Skills

Talent acquisition

People operations

Startup experience

AI-first recruiting

Vendor management

Tools

Ashby ATS

Rippling HRIS

Carta/Pave benchmarking

Job description

The multi-trillion dollar insurance industry still relies on phone calls, paper forms, and outdated systems that are slow, error-prone, and easy to fake.

That's where Axle comes in. We bridge the gap between insurance and other industries through an AI-native clearinghouse for insurance, enabling our clients to make business decisions in seconds instead of hours while allowing consumers to unlock their most underutilized financial asset - insurance.

Why you should consider joining

• Trusted by Fortune 500 companies and top brands like Avis, Rocket Mortgage, and Experian - with more joining every month.

• Revenue growing 35% QoQ to mid-7-figures ARR, with best-in-class retention and growth continuing to accelerate.

• Join a tight-knit team where everyone drives real impact - top-tier customer and revenue metrics with half the team size of typical startups.

• Work on genuinely hard, unsolved problems at the intersection of agentic AI, complex data structuring, and financial risk.

• Competitive compensation and equity, full benefits, unlimited time-off, and an annual team offsite.

What You'll Do

As Axle's first People Operations hire, you'll build the people function end to end and be the connective tissue between our hiring ambitions and the team experience that makes people want to stay and do the best work of their careers. This is a full-stack recruiting mandate: you'll lead hiring across the entire company - both our technical org (Engineering and Product) and our go-to-market org (Sales, Partnerships, and Deployment) - so fluency operating across two very different talent markets is essential.

This is a builder's role, and it will ebb and flow. In one stretch you might be running six open reqs at once; in another you'll be designing a performance review cycle from scratch. As a north star, expect roughly 50-75% talent (own every open req, source and manage external recruiters, run a great candidate experience, and drive the offer process end to end) and 25-50% people operations (onboarding, culture, L&D, performance management, and compensation bands). The mix will shift with the season; the bar won't - every new hire should feel set up to win from day one.

Talent & Recruiting

• Own all open requisitions across both technical hiring (Engineering, Product) and go-to-market hiring (Sales, Partnerships, Deployment), plus Corporate roles - managing pipeline, calibration, and velocity across each.

• Source, select, and manage our external recruiting partners (retained, embedded, and sourcing-only) and hold them accountable to results.

• Administer and optimize (bringing AI) our ATS (Ashby) - from workflow automation to funnel reporting.

• Design and run a candidate experience that "wows" - fast, personal, and consistent.

• Drive the offer process end to end, from leveling and comp to close.

• Standardize interview panels and train interviewers to keep our hiring bar calibrated as we scale.

• Build Axle's employer brand and top-of-funnel talent pipeline through recruiting and talent-building events - hosted meetups, hackathons, happy hours, and community nights - with a particular focus on New York, where we're scaling fastest and building a young, in-office team out of our Chelsea office (152 W 25th St).

People Operations

• Build and own onboarding so every new hire ramps quickly and integrates with their team.

• Develop our employee handbook, first HR policies, and the internal resources that scale a growing team across New York and Atlanta.

• Partner with leadership on compensation bands and benchmarking (Carta/Pave), equity refreshes, and performance/feedback cycles.

• Own the systems of the function - HRIS (Rippling), ATS (Ashby), and the workflows that connect them.

• Shape our culture deliberately - rituals, all-company onsites, recognition, in-office events (especially in New York), and the small surprises that make Axle a place people love working.

• Partner with the founding team on org design and headcount planning.

Operational Efficiency

• Building out AI agents / skills to help bridge communication gaps between different teams

• Developing best practices for team members on which tools to use

• Identifying and championing opportunities where AI or automation can help the business move faster - not just in the people operations function, but across the entire company

• Comfortable experimenting with new tools and workflows without deep technical expertise

• Partnering with the right teams to turn ideas into action

• Encouraging broad adoption of new tools across the team

What We're Looking For

• 5+ years across Talent/Recruiting and People/HR, with real depth in both.

• Experience at a venture-backed startup (Seed through Series C) in a hyper-growth phase, where you've had to make trade-offs about priorities and resources.

• A track record as a hands-on operator who has also built systems - equally comfortable closing a candidate and designing a comp band.

• Deep recruiting instincts - you've filled diverse roles across both technical and go-to-market teams, and managed external recruiters to results.

• Fluency with modern people tooling (ATS, HRIS) and a bias toward automation and AI - we run AI-first internally.

• Exceptional judgment, discretion, and communication - this is a high-trust role with visibility into comp, strategy, and the founding team's priorities.

• A builder's mindset: comfortable with ambiguity, cyclical workloads, and defining the function as you go.

What would be even better

• You've been the first People/Talent hire at a venture-backed startup and stood up the function from zero.

• Experience hiring technical talent (engineering, product) at a high bar, not just GTM roles.

• You've implemented or deeply administered an ATS (Ashby a plus) and built hiring analytics and reporting.

• A strong network across NYC startup talent you can tap for referrals and events.

What you can expect

• $140k - $200k base

• 0.05 - 0.2% with 4 year vesting cycle, 1 year cliff

• Comprehensive benefits: Competitive comp + equity, medical/dental/vision, 401k, unlimited vacation, flexible hybrid work, annual offsite and bring pets to work.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Axle

Axle is an equal opportunity workplace - we are dedicated to equal employment opportunities regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, or Veteran status. We believe in actively building a team rich in diverse backgrounds, experiences, and opinions to better allow our employees, products, and community to thrive.

Axle is the AI-native clearinghouse for property and casualty insurance. Our infrastructure and AI agents automate complex insurance workflows for third parties including verification, monitoring, and policy updates. Read more about our vision: https://www.axle.insure/blog/announcing-our-17-5m-series-a-led-by-base10

We are backed by leading investors including Base10, Y Combinator, and Gradient Ventures (Google's AI fund) and angels from companies like Plaid and Cox Automotive.

Our team is in-person 4 days a week in our Flatiron/NoMad office in NYC and our West Midtown office in Atlanta.