Senior Manager, People Operations

Linden Lab; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Linden Lab is seeking a Senior Manager, People Operations in San Francisco to own the day-to-day employee experience, payroll, benefits, and compliance. You’ll lead a team, collaborate with senior People leaders, and drive automation across HR systems.

You will champion scalable processes, partner across functions, and help shape people strategy while navigating multi-state requirements and evolving people practices.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of progressive People Operations experience, with multi-state payroll and benefits expertise.
• Strong knowledge of California requirements and HR compliance.
• Experience designing automation and workflow improvements within HR.

Responsibilities

• Run day-to-day People Operations, ensuring accuracy, timeliness, and a high-quality employee experience.
• Lead payroll administration and approved changes across a multi-state workforce with strong controls.
• Oversee benefits, leaves, retirement plans, and workers' compensation with user-friendly processes.
• Own employee lifecycle from pre-onboarding to offboarding and change management.
• Drive data-driven improvements, reduce manual work, and design scalable HR systems.

Skills

People Operations

Payroll processing

Benefits administration

HR systems

Compliance management

Process automation

Tools

Paylocity

No-code automation tools

Job description

Linden Lab develops platforms that empower people to create, connect, and thrive through transformative virtual experiences. Since our founding in 1999, we have been at the forefront of the creator economy, building durable platforms that support limitless imagination, self-expression, and human connection.

In 2003, we launched Second Life, a vibrant, user-driven virtual world that has grown into a living global community. Hundreds of thousands of people actively spend time there, building relationships, expressing themselves, and creating meaning together. With over two billion user creations and a flourishing $650 million economy, Second Life enables people not only to connect, but for those who choose, to build real livelihoods through their creativity.

Unlike traditional social media, Second Life fosters sustained, positive connection between strangers. It offers mobility, agency, and community to people whose real-world circumstances may limit their options, and it creates space for belonging, collaboration, and shared purpose. For many, it is not just a platform, but a place where they can participate fully and authentically.

The same principles that shape our communities also guide how we work together. We believe our strength lies in diversity of perspectives, experiences, and ideas. Our values are rooted in organizational health, strengths-based leadership, and the belief that collaborative teams are stronger than individuals.

At Linden Lab, your work directly shapes how real people connect, create, and build meaningful lives online. You will be part of a thoughtful, mission-driven team working on technology with real social impact and uncommon longevity. Whether you are building innovative tools or fostering a welcoming community, you will find a place to belong, grow, and do work that matters. We invite you to come as you are.

Work Location

This role requires working onsite in our San Francisco office for full workdays Monday through Thursday. Employees have the flexibility to work remotely or from the office on Fridays as part of their regular five day workweek. Before applying, please consider whether this ongoing schedule and your expected commute are a good long-term fit.

Your Mission

We're looking for a Senior Manager, People Operations to take ownership of the day-to-day work that powers the employee experience and keep raising the bar for how we deliver it. Reporting to our Director, People & Culture, you’ll lead the operational work while helping us continually improve how it gets done.

We believe the best People teams create leverage. Our impact isn't measured by how much work flows through our team, but by how much more effective the organization becomes because of it. We remove friction, create clarity, and build systems that help people move faster, make better decisions, and focus their energy where it matters most. By amplifying what our people are capable of accomplishing, we help move the business forward.

That philosophy shapes how we approach our work. We think in systems, look for connections, solve for root causes, and continually ask how something could work better. You won't be joining a team that needs convincing to challenge an existing process or try a new approach. Bring us the ideas we haven't thought of yet.

How You'll Grow With Us

You'll join an ambitious, forward-thinking People team where challenging the status quo is part of the job. You'll be expected to bring your own thinking, understand the why behind what we do, and speak up when you see a better way. You'll move with urgency, learn constantly, and be surrounded by people who hold themselves to the same high standards.

From the start, you'll have access and context. You'll work closely with senior People leaders, be included in strategy conversations, and understand the thinking behind our organizational priorities and decisions. You'll also learn from how we navigate the harder parts of People work, where there isn't always an obvious answer and judgment, empathy, and the employee experience matter just as much as process.

There's real freedom to build and experiment here. You'll deepen your fluency in AI, automation, workflow design, systems, and integrations as you test new approaches and turn your ideas into changes you can actually see.

Your growth won't be limited to the role you step into. You'll take on increasingly complex challenges, grow as a people leader, and expand your influence as you demonstrate what you can do. You'll leave this role with a broader toolkit, sharper judgment, and a much deeper understanding of how great People teams can make an organization better.

The Impact You'll Drive

• Run the day-to-day People Operations function, owning operational execution and ensuring the work is accurate, timely, compliant, and delivers a consistently high-quality employee experience.
• Lead payroll administration and the execution of approved compensation changes across our multi-state workforce, maintaining strong controls and resolving issues quickly and accurately.
• Oversee and execute benefits, retirement plan, employee leave, and workers' compensation administration, balancing technical precision and compliance with an experience that makes complex programs easier for employees to navigate.
• Lead the employee lifecycle from pre-onboarding through offboarding, bringing together systems, logistics, communications, manager readiness, employee changes, and key milestones to create a seamless, high-quality experience.
• Drive continuous improvement across the function, using systems thinking, data, and feedback to identify root causes, simplify complexity, strengthen self-service, and design out recurring problems.
• Design and build automated workflows that eliminate unnecessary manual work, improve handoffs, prevent errors, and create leverage across the People function, turning opportunities for automation into working solutions.
• Optimize our People systems, including Paylocity, maintaining exceptional data integrity and finding better ways for our technology, data, and workflows to work together.
• Develop and analyze People metrics, dashboards, and reporting to surface workforce trends, employee insights, emerging risks, and opportunities, translating data into actionable recommendations for People leadership.
• Drive recurring compliance and audit work, including retirement plan administration, worker classification, payroll and state tax requirements, employee records, and other regulatory obligations, translating changing requirements into reliable processes and controls.
• Advise employees and managers on policies, benefits, leaves, performance processes, and day-to-day employee matters, applying strong judgment and recognizing when an issue requires broader People leadership involvement.
• Hire, manage, and develop a People Operations team member, building their expertise, judgment, confidence, and ownership while creating strong shared context, cross-training, and continuity across the function.
• Proactively surface meaningful trends, risks, decisions, and progress to People leadership, bringing the right context and thoughtful recommendations so leaders have what they need to make informed decisions.
• Shape broader People initiatives and strategy through your functional expertise, data, and proximity to the work, helping us build programs, systems, and employee experiences that are as strong in execution as they are in design.

How You'll Shape Our Future

At Linden, we celebrate all dimensions of diversity, including diversity of experience. Candidates will be most successful if they bring:

• 7+ years of progressive People Operations experience, with deep, hands-on expertise across payroll, benefits, leaves, compliance, HR systems, and the employee lifecycle, including experience supporting a multi-state workforce and strong knowledge of California requirements.
• 3+ years of experience directly managing and developing others, with the ability to create clarity, build capability and judgment, delegate meaningful ownership, and maintain a consistently high bar for the work.
• A systems-thinking mindset and a track record of looking beyond the immediate task to understand root causes, dependencies, downstream impacts, and opportunities to build better ways of working.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to communicate effectively across the organization and manage up by anticipating what leaders need to know, proactively surfacing relevant context, progress, and risks, and bringing thoughtful recommendations.
• Demonstrated experience designing and building process automations and workflows that meaningfully change how work gets done, using automation, AI, integrations, or no-code/low-code tools to reduce manual effort, prevent errors, and create leverage.
• Strong analytical and program management skills, with the ability to use data to spot patterns and inform decisions while bringing structure to complex, cross-functional work and driving it through successful implementation.
• Exceptional execution capacity and a strong sense of urgency. You can manage a high volume of work and competing priorities, keep things moving, close loops, and maintain a high bar for accuracy and quality along the way.