People Operations Manager

ABOUT AIRWALLEX Airwallex is the AI-native financial operating system for a real-time, intelligent economy. More than 675,000 businesses, including McLaren Racing, Qantas, SHEIN, and TikTok, use us, directly or through our platform partners, to run their financial operations or build and monetize financial products of their own. We started in Melbourne in 2015 to build the infrastructure global commerce runs on. We're the regulated backbone behind global payments: not by accident, but by design. A decade plus, 85+ licenses, and a financial infrastructure spanning North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific. We're co-headquartered in San Francisco and Singapore, with more than 2,700 people across 27 offices. We hire builders with founder-level energy, people who move fast with good judgment, dig in with real curiosity, and make calls from first principles rather than waiting to be told what to do. Read our operating principles https://www.airwallex.com/en-us/operating-principles to see it in full.   HOW YOU'LL MAKE IMPACT As People Operations Manager, EMEA, you’ll help deliver a high-quality employee experience across a growing and diverse region. You’ll lead end-to-end employee lifecycle operations across an EMEA footprint of approximately 400 employees, while improving the processes, systems and workflows that help the region scale. You’ll partner closely with People Partners, Talent Acquisition, Payroll, Total Rewards, Workplace Experience, Legal, Compliance, IT and business leaders to deliver accurate, compliant and responsive People Operations support. - Lead and develop the regional People Operations function, owning onboarding and orientation, background checks, HRIS data integrity, payroll inputs and changes, benefits and leave administration, and offboarding. - Drive operational excellence by codifying and maintaining regional SOPs, managing the People & Talent JIRA helpdesk queue, and setting clear workflows and standards consistent with global guidance. - Partner with Payroll, IT and Compliance on accurate and timely transactions, audits, vendor coordination, invoicing and purchase orders, and change control. - Run regular data audits and quality checks, identify discrepancies, and improve data integrity, reporting and governance. - Support the administration and rollout of benefits across relevant EMEA markets, working with internal stakeholders and external providers. - Provide operational support for employment changes, leave, probation, right-to-work processes, visas and other country-specific employee matters. - Work closely with People Partners and Legal to ensure processes are delivered consistently and in line with relevant local requirements. - Identify inefficiencies in manual workflows and drive process improvements, automation and appropriate use of AI. - Support regional and global People projects, including the implementation of new systems, policies and employee programmes. - Manage, prioritise and allocate work across People Operations support resources where applicable, leading a collaborative, team-based environment. You’ll work from our London or Amsterdam office three days per week. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR Essentials - 6+ years of experience in People Operations, HR Operations or a closely related HR generalist role, ideally in a fast-growing software, internet or fintech company. - Strong knowledge of employee lifecycle processes, including onboarding, offboarding, payroll inputs, benefits, HRIS administration and employee data management. - Experience supporting employees across multiple EMEA countries, including the Netherlands, UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Poland, and working with local employment requirements. - Familiarity with payroll processes, including variable compensation such as commissions, bonuses or allowances. - A hands-on, detail-oriented approach and the ability to manage high-volume operational work without losing sight of quality. - Strong organisational skills, sound judgement and the ability to prioritise competing requests in a fast-moving environment. - Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the confidence to work with employees, managers, senior stakeholders and external providers. - A track record of improving processes, documenting ways of working and reducing manual effort. Experience using AI to drive improvements is highly preferred. - High standards of confidentiality, discretion and data accuracy. - The ability to operate independently, solve problems pragmatically and make progress despite ambiguity. Preferred - Familiarity with BambooHR, Deel, Jira, Confluence, Lattice, Slack and Google Workspace. - Experience supporting EOR populations or employees across multiple legal entities. - Experience with HR systems implementation, workflow automation, reporting or AI-enabled process improvement. - Experience partnering with Workplace Experience or supporting office-based employee programmes. - Professional HR qualification or equivalent practical experience. YOU'LL THRIVE HERE IF - You enjoy working closely with people across multiple countries and time zones as part of one connected, global team, including flexing your hours occasionally to make that connection work. - You’re comfortable making decisions with incomplete information and moving quickly anyway. - You connect dots across functions and hold the big picture without losing grip on the details. - You over-communicate by design. You’d rather flag something early than let it become a surprise. - You’re low-ego. You care more about the right outcome than getting credit for it. LEARN MORE ABOUT YOUR TEAM People and Talent is where the people infrastructure of a genuinely global company gets built. Our company is growing fast across multiple regions, hiring in highly competitive markets, while many of the systems and programs themselves are still being designed. That means the job is not to run established processes well — it is to define what great looks like for a global fintech at this stage of growth, and then build it. This is a team for the ambitious who want the resources and scope of a scaled business combined with the creative latitude of one still being shaped. If you want to influence how a truly global company hires, grows, and builds a talent dense organization, this is where people work becomes company-building work. APPLICANT SAFETY POLICY: FRAUD AND THIRD-PARTY RECRUITERS To protect you from recruitment scams, please be aware that Airwallex will not ask for bank details, sensitive ID numbers (i.e. passport), or any form of payment during the application or interview process. All official communication will come from an @airwallex.com http://airwallex.com email address. Please apply only through careers.airwallex.com http://careers.airwallex.com or our official LinkedIn page. Airwallex does not accept unsolicited resumes from search firms/recruiters. Airwallex will not pay any fees to search firms/recruiters if a candidate is submitted by a search firm/recruiter unless an agreement has been entered into with respect to specific open position(s). Search firms/recruiters submitting resumes to Airwallex on an unsolicited basis shall be deemed to accept this condition, regardless of any other provision to the contrary. EQUAL OPPORTUNITY Airwallex is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity and anyone seeking employment at Airwallex is considered based on merit, qualifications, competence and talent. We don’t regard color, religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, ancestry, citizenship, sex, marital or family status, disability, gender, or any other legally protected status when making our hiring decisions. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.