Director, People Operations

About this role

CHAOS Industries is redefining modern defense with a multi-product portfolio that gives the ultimate advantage—domain dominance. The company's products are powered by Coherent Distributed Networks (CDN™), empowering warfighters, commercial air operators, and border protection teams to act faster, adapt rapidly, and stay ahead of evolving threats.

CHAOS Industries was founded in 2022 and has raised a total of $1 billion in funding from leading investors, including 8VC, Accel, and Valor Equity Partners. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, with offices in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, and London. For more information, please visit www.chaosinc.com .

Role Overview:

We’re looking for a strategic, experienced Director of People Operations to lead and scale our People Operations function as we continue our rapid growth. This role owns the strategy, systems, and policy foundation behind onboarding, HR technology, benefits, employee relations, and our internal HR knowledge base — and leads the Generalist Manager and Senior Generalist roles who own day-to-day execution across the business.

You’ll be accountable for how People Operations shows up as a support function across CHAOS: the quality and consistency of the work, how easy it is for employees and managers to get what they need, the policies that govern how we operate, and the efficiency of the systems and processes behind it all. This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who wants to build the systems and standards that let a growing HR team scale without losing quality.

Responsibilities:

• Lead, hire, develop, and manage the People Operations team, including the Generalists and Operators.

• Own the People Operations policy library end to end: identify where policy is needed, oversee and draft it, and shepherd it through Legal and Compliance review, rollout, and revision.

• Own the HR systems and vendor roadmap (Rippling, Sparrow, Culture Amp, Confluence, JIRA, and future tools), including vendor selection, contract negotiation/renewal, and integrations.

• Design and continuously improve how the business engages with People Operations — intake processes, response-time standards, and self-service resources like Confluence — so HR is easy to work with at every level.

• Own benefits program design and broker/vendor strategy, in partnership with Finance and leadership.

• Own & oversight of performance and compensation cycle process design, timelines, tooling

• Own the compliance training curriculum and audit standards, in partnership with Legal and InfoSec.

• Build a culture of quality and consistency across the team through documentation standards and feedback loops.

• Identify and prioritize opportunities to automate and streamline HR processes — onboarding, offboarding, leaves, and benefits administration and scale with the company.

• Own People Operations reporting and metrics in partnership with Data & Insights teams. Translate team-level data into insights and recommendations for senior leadership.

• Represent People Operations in cross-functional planning with Legal, Finance, IT, and Security.

• Work full-time onsite out of our office in Los Angeles (Hawthorne), California.

Minimum Requirements:

• 10+ years of progressive HR experience, including 3+ years directly managing HR generalists, ideally in a high-growth or startup setting.

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience required.

• Demonstrated experience owning HR policy development end to end, including partnership with Legal/Compliance.

• Experience designing or scaling an HR service-delivery model — intake processes, SLAs, self-service resources — in a growing organization.

• Deep knowledge of U.S. employment law (especially California; multi-state required).

• Experience owning HRIS strategy and vendor management (Rippling or comparable platforms).

• Track record leading complex employee relations investigations, restructurings, or reductions in force at an executive-stakeholder level.

• Proven ability to hire, develop, and manage HR generalist/business partner teams.

• Strong executive presence; able to advise senior leadership and the executive team on sensitive, high-stakes matters.

• Strong analytical skills; comfortable owning HR metrics and reporting to leadership.

• Must be a U.S. Citizen. This position requires access to information and systems subject to U.S. export control and government contract regulations (e.g., ITAR/EAR), which are restricted to U.S. Citizens by law.

Preferred Requirements:

• SPHR or SHRM-SCP certification.

• Experience in defense, aerospace, or another regulated, security-conscious industry.

• Experience building a People Operations function from the ground up inside a scaling startup.

• Experience governing Confluence or a similar knowledge-management system at scale.

• Experience partnering with Legal/InfoSec on compliance training program design.

Why CHAOS?

• Health Benefits: Medical, dental, and vision benefits 100% paid for by the company

• Additional benefits : 401k (+ 50% company match up to 6% of pay), FSA, HSA, life insurance, and more

• Our Perks: Free daily lunch, ‘No meeting Fridays’, unlimited PTO, casual dress code

• Compensation Components: Competitive base salaries, generous pre-IPO stock option grants, relocation assistance, and (coming soon!) annual bonuses

• Team Growth: 350 employees and counting across 5 global offices

[$172,000 - $220,000]

The stated compensation range reflects only the targeted base compensation range and excludes additional earnings such as bonus, equity, and benefits. If your compensation requirements fall outside of the range, we still encourage you to apply. The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary offer may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations

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