Instawork is on a mission to create meaningful economic opportunities for skilled hourly professionals in communities around the globe. Our AI-powered labor marketplace helps local businesses scale, and enables global technology companies to push the frontiers of robotics and AI. Backed by world-class investors like Benchmark, Spark Capital, Craft Ventures, Greylock, Y Combinator, and others, we’re looking for exceptional talent to reimagine the way the world works.
We’re hiring a People & Talent Manager to lead our talent function and run our People operations. This role sits at the manager or senior manager level and reports to our Chief Legal Officer. You will set the direction for how we hire, own the employee lifecycle, and build the systems that make both work. You also have bought into how AI is changing how we work. We want someone who looks for ways to use it. You simplify work, automate processes, and build employee experiences that scale.
Key Responsibilities
Talent Leadership
- Set talent acquisition strategy, and develop our recruiters through coaching, feedback, and clear growth paths.
- Evaluate our applicant tracking system and recruiting tools, and decide whether to keep, change, or replace them.
- Find and assess alternatives to LinkedIn Recruiter that improve sourcing quality and cost.
- Define and track recruiting metrics, including funnel conversion, time-to-fill, offer acceptance, and hiring-team SLAs. Change process based on what the data shows.
- Set and enforce standards for interview process, feedback, and candidate communication across teams and locations.
- Own the offer process from approval through onboarding handoff. Ensure every hire meets EEO, pay transparency, and salary-history requirements, with Finance and Legal.
People Operations & Employee Lifecycle
- Own the lifecycle from onboarding through offboarding, including employee changes and leaves. Make each step seamless for the employee.
- Serve as the primary contact for employees on People questions, policies, and workplace resources.
- Maintain HRIS records and the People data behind them. Audit regularly and recommend fixes.
- Support HR compliance, including classifications, required documentation, and policy updates. Take complex employee relations and legal matters to Legal.
- Manage benefits, including broker and vendor relationships, plan renewals, and open enrollment.
Manager Support & People Programs
- Advise managers on People policies, performance management, and employee concerns. Run performance review and calibration cycles.
- Build programs that improve employee experience, engagement, and culture.
AI Enablement
- Build AI-enabled workflows and tools that reduce manual work and make People information easier to access. Keep confidentiality, judgment, and human oversight in each one.
What You Bring
- 6+ years in People, HR, or Talent roles, including experience leading recruiting or talent acquisition teams.
- Experience evaluating and implementing recruiting or HR technology, including an ATS. Greenhouse experience is a plus.
- Experience with sourcing platforms beyond LinkedIn Recruiter.
- Independent ownership of People processes and the employee lifecycle.
- Strong HRIS experience. Rippling experience is a plus.
- Benefits administration, including work with brokers and vendors on plan costs and utilization.
- Working knowledge of HR compliance, leaves, employee relations, and hiring law. Sound judgment about when to involve Legal.
- Experience supporting performance management cycles and company-wide People programs.
- Genuine interest in AI and automation, backed by professional use. Experience building AI-enabled workflows or internal tools is a strong plus.
- Attention to detail and reliable follow-through across competing priorities.
- A calm, solution-oriented approach to changing priorities and sensitive employee situations.
- Strong communication and the discretion to handle confidential employee matters.
- A drive to keep improving how work gets done.
Our Values
-
Empathy, Trust & Candor
We put ourselves in the shoes of our colleagues and customers and don’t shy away from uncomfortable conversations, instead building trust through honest and direct feedback. -
Bias for Action
We practice high-velocity decision-making, clear-eyed that we often operate with incomplete information. Growing quickly means it’s OK to be wrong, so long as we learn from our mistakes and course correct! -
Always Be Learning
We’re a curious bunch, and with AI transforming our workplace we encourage everyone to learn from each other, compounding our knowledge and experience to help us change an entire industry. -
Act Like an Owner
We work long, hard, and smart, building products that delight our users and drive growth. Your ability to impact Instawork is limited only by your courage and conviction, not your job description.
About Instawork
Founded in 2015, Instawork is the nation’s leading online labor marketplace for food services, hospitality, light industry, and logistics, connecting more than 7M skilled workers with local restaurants, hotels, warehouses, stadiums, and more. Our AI-powered platform serves thousands of businesses across more than 50 major markets in the United States and Canada. We're not just helping fill shifts, we're supporting local economies—and we're just getting started!
Instawork has been featured by CBS News, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press. Forbes included us on their Next Billion Dollar Startups list; RetailTech Breakthrough named us Workforce Hiring Solution of the Year for 2025; and Inc. 5000 recognized us as one of the country's top 10% fastest-growing companies two years in a row. But what matters most is our impact. We're solving real problems for real people, and we’re doing it at scale.
Join our team to help us build something that matters! We’re looking for superstars who want to help us shape the future of work. With hubs in San Francisco, Bangalore, and Chicago, city offices in New York, Phoenix, and Singapore, we're back to working together in-person five days a week because we believe the best ideas happen when great people collaborate face-to-face. We also value diverse perspectives and encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds.
Ready to make an impact? Learn more at www.instawork.com/about.