The Role
Lead People Operations and act as product owner for people processes across the employee lifecycle. Standardize, automate, and improve onboarding, payroll, benefits, contracts and offboarding. Manage and develop the People Operations team, partner with Finance, Legal and HR Tech to implement HRIS improvements and self-service, and drive HR tech/AI innovation to scale a consistent, high-quality employee experience across geographies.
Summary Generated by Built In
sennder is Europe's Leading Digital Freight Forwarder. In a traditional industry, we're moving fast and focusing on the digitalization and automation of road logistics. By leveraging our proprietary technology, we're building an ecosystem that is leading the industry into the 21st century.
We are a growing team looking for a Senior Manager, HR Products & Services, in the People department to help us on our journey to revolutionize road freight logistics. The role is based in our Berlin or Amsterdam offices.
WHAT YOU WILL DO …
As Senior Manager, HR Products & Services, you will lead the People Operations team while simultaneously acting as the product owner of our people processes: auditing them ruthlessly, standardizing what should be consistent, automating what shouldn't require human effort, and continuously raising the bar on employee experience.
You'll own the full employee lifecycle operationally (contracts, onboarding, payroll, benefits, offboarding) and you'll be responsible for transforming how that lifecycle is delivered. That means clearly defining what's broken and why before reaching a solution, building durable standards that scale across geographies, and introducing technology and automation that genuinely moves the needle. You'll also be the team's radar for what's emerging in the HR Tech and AI space, bringing in what's relevant and filtering out what isn't.
In this role you will ...
Lead People Operations
- Manage and develop the People Operations team, setting clear priorities, building capability, and creating a culture of continuous improvement and employee centricity
- Own operational accountability for the full employee lifecycle: onboarding, offboarding, contract and data management, payroll coordination, and benefits administration, ensuring accuracy, compliance, and a high-quality employee experience at every touchpoint
- Serve as the escalation point for complex employee queries, payroll issues, and compliance questions across sennder's operating geographies
- Partner with Finance and HC controlling on headcount data, payroll reconciliation, and employee cost accuracy, partner with Legal on labour law compliance and policy updates
Transform People Ops as a Product
- Treat every people process as a product: audit the current state, define what great looks like for employees and managers, and build a roadmap to get there
- Lead the identification and elimination of manual, high-effort processes through automation and smarter system configuration, working closely with the HR Technology function to implement changes in Bob, and connected tools
- Build self-service capabilities so that managers and employees can complete common tasks and get answers without needing to reach out to the People team
- Lead a mindset shift within People Ops toward scalable, experience-led service delivery
- Maintain a strong innovation mindset, innovative view of the HR technology and the AI landscape, new tools, automation capabilities, emerging best practices and regularly bring informed perspectives on what sennder should explore, pilot, or adopt
WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR …
- 8+ years in People Operations or HR, with at least 2 years managing a team, ideally in a fast-scaling international tech company
- Deep operational expertise across the employee lifecycle, payroll coordination, and benefits. You know what good looks like and you've built it before
- A genuine product mindset: you think in user journeys, prioritize by impact, and are restless about process quality and employee experience
- Proven ability to lead transformation, not just maintain operations, you've redesigned processes, introduced automation, or led system migrations that meaningfully changed how a team works
- Comfortable with HR technology (experience with Bob or similar HRIS preferred) and capable of specifying requirements for system improvements without needing to be the one who builds them
- Strong analytical capability: you use data to understand where processes are breaking down and to make the case for change
- Excellent stakeholder management. You can work across Finance, Legal, IT, and business leaders, and you know how to influence without authority
- Fluent in English. German is a strong plus given our operating environment
WHY CHOOSE SENNDER…
We believe in empowering our people to grow beyond their limits, embrace challenges, and create solutions that drive our collective success. Our culture thrives on entrepreneurial spirit, resilience, and collaboration.
Dynamic Scale-Up sennder is at a pivotal stage – transitioning from a scale-up to a sustainably growing company. This means we move fast and constantly push ourselves to improve. Joining us means being part of an ambitious, international team of talented individuals who value teamwork as much as bold thinking. Face-to-face connections across our offices remain central – it's not uncommon to travel to our offices across Europe to collaborate as we tackle challenges and celebrate wins, together.
Put Your Stamp on the Industry We operate in a complex and ever-changing industry where your ideas and efforts have tangible, transformative impact. This is your chance to be hands-on in creating sustainable, meaningful solutions that help businesses thrive.
Employee Well-Being We make mental wellbeing and engagement a priority through initiatives like our sennCare program, a partnership with nilo (global wellbeing platform), and regular satisfaction surveys via Culture Amp. And most importantly, work alongside people who truly care about you as a person. There is something special about the people at sennder that goes beyond just ‘work’.
Your Growth, Rewarded We believe in rewarding our team for their commitment and contributions to our long-term success. Our compensation package may include performance bonuses, referral rewards, or equity that align with our goal of building a thriving company together. We're excited to grow with you!
Vibrant Workspaces Our offices are equipped with healthy snacks, focus zones, and social areas to keep you energized and connected. When you walk into a sennder office, you immediately feel the sennder spirit: our shared culture paired with each location’s own unique character. Highlights include a slide in our Wroclaw office and a sunny rooftop terrace in Berlin, Amsterdam, and Milan! We also enjoy coming together regularly, from monthly aperitivos to spontaneous team moments.
We celebrate diversity and value your character just as much as your skills. If you don’t meet every requirement, don’t worry, we still encourage you to take a chance and apply. Bring your authentic self and help us shape the future of logistics in Europe.
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Learn more about us on our career website.
Skills Required
- 8+ years in People Operations or HR
- At least 2 years managing a team
- Deep operational expertise across the employee lifecycle, payroll coordination, and benefits
- Proven ability to lead transformation: redesign processes, introduce automation, or lead system migrations
- Product mindset: design user journeys, prioritize by impact, improve employee experience
- Comfortable with HR technology and HRIS configuration
- Experience with Bob or similar HRIS
- Strong analytical capability using data to identify process issues and drive change
- Excellent stakeholder management across Finance, Legal, IT and business leaders
- Fluent in English
- German language skills
- Based in Berlin or Amsterdam (role location)
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The Company
What We Do
sennder – Europe’s #1 digital freight-forwarder platform for Full Truck Loads. sennder is a leading digital road freight forwarder in continental Europe, linking large commercial shippers with small freight carriers. With its in-house-developed platform, sennder provides a new level of automation, transparency and efficiency to the European €300 billion road freight market, which until now has been dependent on paper, phone and fax and characterized by multi-layer subcontracting. sennder’s digital connection to over 40,000 trucks allows for almost unlimited capacities, no matter what time of the day. sennder digitalizes the truckload-shipping ecosystem by providing mobile apps to drivers, fleet management tools to carrier managers and logistics management solutions to shippers. Real-time booking, a designated contact person always on hand, as well as precise live tracking, bring full transparency to any logistics supply chain. By integrating directly with the shippers’ Transport Management and Freight Management Systems via APIs and by cutting the multiple middle men, sennder increases efficiency and reduces cost for all stakeholders
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