People Ops Lead

Ricursive Intelligence; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Ricursive Intelligence seeks its first People Ops hire to own the employee experience, systems, and culture as we scale.

You will partner with the Founding Recruiter to design end-to-end people processes, from onboarding and documentation to performance reviews and career development frameworks.

Qualifications

• Experience building people ops processes from scratch at early-stage startups.
• Strong familiarity with HRIS systems and policy drafting.
• Ability to design simple, scalable frameworks for performance reviews, feedback, and growth.

Responsibilities

• Design, orchestrate, and implement onboarding and offboarding processes.
• Operate HRIS and develop people policies in collaboration with leadership.
• Define and implement performance review cycles and career development paths.
• Create and manage a competitive benefits program to attract and retain talent.
• Lead internal communications and culture initiatives, including team events and engagement programs.

Skills

Onboarding design

HRIS management

Compliance

Performance reviews

Career development

Benefits planning

Internal communications

Culture building

Job description

Ricursive Intelligence is a frontier AI Lab focused on building self-improving systems, starting with chip design. We are reinventing chip development and closing the loop between AI and the hardware that fuels it, recursively accelerating the path to artificial superintelligence.

We're looking for our first People Ops hire to build and manage the foundation of our employee experience. In this role, you will own the people operations function in its entirety, ensuring our team is supported, our systems run seamlessly, and our culture thrives as we scale. You will work closely with our Founding Recruiter on all things people. You should love building new processes from scratch and believe in a high-trust, engaging, and fun workplace. We're looking for candidates with prior experience in people ops roles at Series A or B start-ups.

Key responsibilities:

• Onboarding & Offboarding: Design, orchestrate, and execute a seamless onboarding process that sets new hires up for success as well as clear, professional offboarding protocols.

• People Systems & Compliance: Maintain and operate our HRIS, partnering closely with our CFO, DevOps Lead, and Founding Recruiter on cross-functional matters. Draft and build systems not yet in place, including an employee handbook.

• Performance & Career Development: Partner with leadership to define and implement simple, high-impact feedback loops, regular performance reviews, and career growth frameworks.

• Workplace Benefits: Pitch and establish a competitive workplace benefits plan that supports our team and keeps us competitive as an employer.

• Culture & Employee Experience: Lead internal communications for all people initiatives, direct our annual team retreat, and curate programs that drive employee engagement, retention, and growth.