Director of People Operations in Sydney

Thanks for stopping by and learning more about this role at Sitemate! We’d love to hear from you.

Brief overview of this role:

• Level: Director
• Location: Sydney, Australia. Hybrid, 2 days in the office
• Team: 2 people: one in Talent Acquisition and a People Operations Manager. Together, you cover payroll, people programs, Talent Acquisition and IT provisioning globally
• Remuneration: AUD 140,000 - AUD 180,000 (excl. Super)

About Sitemate:

Sitemate builds best-in-class software and AI agents for the built world, helping construction, infrastructure and industrial companies work smarter and faster. Our mission is to multiply the engineering power of the built world.

About the role:

Sitemate's Director of People Operations owns the People Operations function end-to-end, global payroll, the employee lifecycle, Talent Acquisition and IT provisioning, and the People programs every department runs to, from performance, engagement and learning and development to levelling and compensation. The role leads a team of two: a Senior Talent Acquisition Manager and a People Operations Manager.

What the functions own:

• The People Operations architecture.
• The frameworks and playbooks.
• The People programs.
• People data and listening.
• The People Operations function and team.
• Global Payroll.
• The recruitment process.

Who you work with:

• CEO.
• Finance.
• Legal.
• Your team.
• Department leaders across GTM, EPD and Marketing.

What needs to happen:

• Keep what's in flight running.
• Map where the admin sits.
• Design the next version of People Operations.
• Build the first agents and automations.
• Turn the People programs into self-serve playbooks.
• Set up the People Operations Manager.

What success looks like:

• By 90 days: You've mapped where manual admin sits across People Operations.
• By 6 months: The design for the next version of People Operations is written down.
• By 12 months: Calibration and promotion outcomes hold to one standard across departments.

Day-to-day:

• Personally build and fix People Operations workflows, automations and agents.
• Design how Rippling, Remote and Ashby work together.
• Write and maintain the frameworks and playbooks managers run off.
• Run the function's weekly cadence.
• Coach your team on direction and standards.
• Handle complex employee relations and compliance cases with Legal.
• Own calibration, promotion and exit decisions across the function.

How we build:

• Our Operating Principles are non-negotiable behavioural standards.

Who this role is for:

• You've led People Operations through a high-growth, high-change period before.
• You think in systems.
• You've personally built HRIS, ATS, automation or AI agent workflows.
• You have deep, current knowledge across payroll, compliance, employee relations, compensation and benefits, and recruitment.
• You thrive with ambiguity.
• You're measured by the people you grow as much as the systems you build.
• You raise uncomfortable truths early.

Who this role is not for:

• Your instinct on a broken process is a new policy, a new tool or more headcount.
• You rely on IT, vendors or specialist teams to build and own the detail.
• You measure your value by being the person everyone comes to with questions.
• You'd treat AI and automation as someone else's project.
• You need very stable, clearly defined reporting lines to stay consistent.

Skills and tools:

• Must have: People Operations or HR leadership experience.
• Systems architecture thinking.
• Hands-on experience building automations or AI agents yourself.
• Payroll and employment compliance across more than one jurisdiction.
• Writing frameworks and playbooks.
• Designing and running people analytics and engagement measurement end to end.
• Employee relations casework handled end to end.

Nice to have:

• Series B or growth-stage scale-up experience.

Essential tools:

• Rippling or a comparable HRIS and global payroll platform.
• Remote or a comparable employer of record platform.
• Ashby or a comparable ATS.
• AI tools and AI coding tools.
• Project Management Tools.
• Google Sheets.

Bonus tools:

• Zapier, Airtable or similar no-code automation.

Read before you apply:

These are public, and they are how we actually operate. Candidates who have read them tend to have better conversations with us.