Director of People Operations

RYZE is hiring a Director, People Operations to build the operational and strategic backbone of the People function. Reporting to one of the Co-Founder's, this person will lead a team of People Operations Partners & Generalists while acting as a strategic partner to leaders across the business. This is a builder's role: someone who can move fast, make smart judgment calls, and turn strategy into programs that stick.

Responsibilities will include:

• Own People Operations end to end, building right-sized infrastructure, processes, and tools as RYZE scales across DTC, retail, and new categories.
• Lead, coach, and develop a team of People Operations Partners and Generalists
• Act as a trusted advisor to leaders across the business on team dynamics, organizational design, and growth challenges, structuring teams for scale.
• Design and lead performance management, succession planning, and workforce planning frameworks that connect individual goals to business priorities, including calibration, manager enablement, and data integrity across review cycles.
• Build retention, culture, and employee engagement strategies that keep pace with a fast-growing, distributed team.
• Lead learning and development and onboarding, giving every new hire a structured path from day one. 
• Maintain a general working knowledge of compensation and benefits programs
• Ensure compliance with federal, state, and local employment law across a multi-state remote workforce, staying ahead of risk rather than reacting to it, and serve as the escalation point for employee relations matters.
• Building SOPs and communication frameworks that make delivery clean and consistent.
• Champion AI adoption and workflow automation across the People function, from document creation to performance plan development, to help the team run leaner and faster.
• Partner with Talent Acquisition, Legal, IT, and Finance to ensure smooth rollout of People Operations initiatives, and bring feedback into policies and processes.
• Partner with Founders and cross-functional leaders on org design and change management, translating strategy into action without getting stuck in process for its own sake.

Professional Qualifications

• 10+ years of progressive HR experience, including team leadership, earned in a high-growth startup or scale-up DTC, CPG, or omnichannel environment.
• Proven track record building and scaling People Operations infrastructure, not just maintaining what already exists.
• Hands-on experience across performance management, succession planning, workforce planning, retention, and employee engagement.
• Experience leading organizational design and change management
• Strong knowledge of federal, state, and local employment law, with real experience supporting a multi-state workforce.
• General working knowledge of compensation and benefits programs, and comfort with HR technology including HRIS platforms, ATS, and people analytics.
• Demonstrated experience with AI tools and workflow automation in HR
• Comfortable operating in a fast-moving, founder-led culture, with a strong bias toward moving things forward over getting stuck in process.
• Bachelor's degree in HR, Business Administration, or a related field.

• Competitive compensation aligned with experience and market benchmarks.
• Comprehensive benefits package
• Paid time off and company-observed holidays.
• Opportunities for professional growth and development.
• A collaborative, inclusive, and supportive work environment.
• Access to tools, resources, and training to support success in the role.