Associate Director - Employee Relations & HR Services Lead

About Clear Street: 

Clear Street is modernizing the brokerage ecosystem. Founded in 2018, Clear Street is a diversified financial services firm replacing the legacy infrastructure used across capital markets.

We started from scratch by building a completely cloud-native clearing and custody system designed for today’s complex, global market. Clear Street’s proprietary prime brokerage platform adds significant efficiency to the market, while focusing on minimizing risk, redundancy, and cost for clients. Our goal is to create a single source-of-truth platform for every asset class, in every country, and in any currency.

By combining highly-skilled product and engineering talent with seasoned finance professionals, we’re building the essentials to compete in today’s fast-paced markets.

Lead, Employee Relations & HR Services

We are seeking a Lead, Employee Relations & HR Services to own two critical and complementary pillars of Clear Street's people function. Reporting to the Head of People, Programs, and Rewards, this is a senior individual contributor role for someone who derives satisfaction from personal ownership of hard problems and the operational excellence to back it up.

On the ER side, you will be the firm's primary resource for investigations, performance management, involuntary separations, reductions in force, and the policy and compliance framework that underpins all of it. On the HR Services side, you will own leave of absence administration, immigration, and also serve as a capable backup to the HR Business Partner team when coverage demands it.

The expectation is full ownership of both pillars not coordination, not oversight of others doing the work, but direct personal accountability for outcomes. If you are someone who wants to build, own, and improve rather than manage and delegate, this role is the right fit.

What You'll Do

Employee Relations & Investigations

• Own all ER matters end to end investigations, workplace conduct, performance issues, and sensitive complaints personally conducting each with rigor, fairness, and clean documentation
• Advise managers and HR leadership with grounded recommendations that reflect both legal risk and business reality
• Partner with Legal and Compliance on matters with regulatory or litigation exposure
• Identify patterns across ER cases and bring forward proactive recommendations to address systemic issues before they escalate

Performance Management & PIPs

• Own the firm's Performance Improvement Plan process end to end advising managers on when / how to initiate and execute a PIP, as well as when a performance issue is beyond repair, exiting the employee with expediency and respect
• Advise on performance-related separations, ensuring the firm's approach is legally sound and treated with appropriate sensitivity

Involuntary Separations & Offboarding

• Manage all involuntary exits personally — decision support, separation agreements, Legal coordination, and offboarding logistics through final day
• Track separation costs and severance liabilities, keeping Finance informed with accurate, timely data

Reductions in Force & Restructuring

• Own the RIF process in partnership with HR, Finance, and Legal — selection criteria, adverse impact analysis, WARN Act compliance, and severance administration
• Build and maintain detailed RIF cost models — severance, benefits continuation, accrued PTO, outplacement, and contractual commitments — presenting scenario-based analyses before decisions are finalized
• Partner directly with Finance on restructuring budgets: fully loaded cost projections, cash flow timing, and scenario modeling by function, geography, and seniority level
• Build and maintain RIF playbooks and documentation templates that allow the firm to execute quickly and compliantly when needed

Policy Development & Compliance

• Own the HR policy library writing, maintaining, and auditing policies across all jurisdictions to ensure they are current, compliant, and clearly written
• Maintain a pulse on the market to ensure new applicable regulations are understood and implemented
• Partner with Legal, Compliance, and HR leadership to keep the employee handbook current and legally sound

Leave of Absence Administration

• Manage all leave of absence programs directly FMLA, ADA accommodations, state and local leave laws, parental leave, and military leave across all jurisdictions in which Clear Street operates

• Serve as the primary resource for employees and managers navigating leave, providing clear guidance, managing timelines, and coordinating return-to-work processes personally
• Ensure leave policies and practices remain current as federal, state, and local requirements evolve, and maintain clean documentation across all active cases

Immigration

• Manage the firm's immigration program in partnership with outside counsel — H-1B, green card, visa support — serving as the internal point of contact for employees and the business

HRBP Coverage

• Act as a capable, credible backup to the HR Business Partner team when coverage demands it supporting business leaders on workforce planning, headcount decisions, manager coaching, and day-to-day HR questions

What We're Looking For

• 8–12 years of progressive HR experience with depth in both employee relations and HR operations; financial services or fintech experience strongly preferred
• A track record of personal ownership: you have run ER processes, built RIF models, managed leave caseloads, and administered immigration programs yourself, not through a team
• Direct experience with the full lifecycle of investigations, PIPs, involuntary separations, and RIFs in a regulated, fast-moving environment
• Demonstrated ability to build RIF cost models and partner with Finance on restructuring budgets: you model scenarios with precision and present economics clearly to senior audiences
• Deep working knowledge of FMLA, ADA, WARN Act, Title VII, and applicable state equivalents, applied practically
• Strong financial modeling skills; clean, defensible models you can stand behind in a room with Finance leadership
• Strong written skills across PIPs, separation agreements, policies, and investigation summaries
• Enough HRBP instinct to read business context and support leaders credibly when called upon
• Direct, confident communicator who delivers difficult messages clearly and constructively
• High personal accountability, you own outcomes, not tasks

We Offer: 

The Base Salary Range for this role is $160,000-$175,000. This range is representative of the starting base salaries for this role at Clear Street. Where a candidate falls in this range will be based on job related factors such as relevant experience, skills, and location. This range represents Base Salary only, which is just one element of Clear Street's total compensation. The range stated does not include other factors of total compensation such as bonuses or equity.

At Clear Street, we offer competitive compensation packages, company equity, 401k matching, gender neutral parental leave, and full medical, dental and vision insurance. Our belief has always been that we are better as a business when we are all together in person. As such, we are requiring employees to be in the office 4 days per week. In-office benefits include lunch stipends, fully stocked kitchens, happy hours, a great location, and amazing views.

Our top priority is our people. We’re continuously investing in a culture that promotes collaboration. We help each other through challenges and celebrate each other's successes. We believe that modern workplaces succeed by virtue of having high-performance workforces that are diverse — in ideas, in cultures, and in experiences. We put in the effort to make such a workplace a daily reality and are proud to be an equal opportunity employer.