People Operations Specialist - Pencil

At Pencil, we are driving innovation in advertising technology through our state-of-the-art SaaS product, which harnesses Generative AI to redefine content creation. Our mission is to make AI the default in advertising without replacing creative people. To achieve this, we need to make sure that our technology isn’t just in the hands of big brands — we need to try to help small businesses and creative individuals too.

We're looking for someone who loves building automations, agents, and workflows, and wants to point that instinct at People Ops. You'll own the data and systems behind our People Ops stack (HiBob, Ashby, Remote), and use that ownership as the foundation for turning slow, manual, multi-tool processes into things that mostly run themselves. This is a role for someone who'd rather ship a working automation this week and improve it next week than spend a month planning the perfect system — someone who gets a genuine kick out of making the unglamorous stuff disappear. You’ll bring expertise, energy, and commercial thinking to help us elevate our People processes.

Key Responsibilities

• Automation & Workflows: Design, build, and maintain automations, workflows, and AI agents across our People Ops tooling (HiBob, Ashby, Remote) — from a simple triggered workflow to a more sophisticated internal agent — turning multi-step manual processes into things that run themselves.
• Data Layer Ownership: Keep HiBob/Ashby/Remote data clean, resolve integration and schema issues between systems, and treat data integrity as the foundation of what you build.
• Onboarding Execution & Optimization: Run new joiner onboarding end to end, treating every manual step touched twice as a candidate for automation to keep the process fast and lightweight.
• Employee Lifecycle Administration: Administer lifecycle changes (promotions, transfers, terminations) across systems and build guardrails — validation rules, alerts, and review steps — to catch errors before they impact payroll or compliance.
• Process Documentation: Create and maintain SOPs, checklists, and playbooks for onboarding, offboarding, and systems admin as processes evolve.
• Compliance & Escalations: Partner with relevant stakeholders on UK employment and compliance judgment calls while building fluency, taking ownership of systems and escalation paths over time.

Your Background

• Hands-on experience building with automation and workflow tools (e.g., Zapier, Make, n8n, Retool or similar) and direct experience configuring or building AI agents.
• Proven working experience with structured data and APIs to reason about schemas, integrations, and system interactions.
• Comfortable acting as systems administrator for SaaS platforms, managing permissions, workflows, and integrations across HRIS/ATS/EOR tools (HiBob, Ashby, Remote) or comparable business systems.
• Experience in a high-growth environment, ideally remote and distributed across geographies, with comfort working asynchronously across EMEA time zones.
• Exposure to People Ops, HR systems, or UK employment practices is a bonus (we hire for builder instinct first and coach domain knowledge).

You’ll Thrive Here If You...

• Are an Owner: Notice friction and fix onboarding or operational bottlenecks proactively.
• Move Fast: Prefer shipping a working automation this week and improving it next week over spending a month designing a perfect system.
• Keep It Simple: Default to solutions with the fewest moving parts.
• Find Joy in Efficiency: Get a kick out of automating recurring manual tasks so nobody has to think about them again.
• Stay Human: Remember that systems sit behind real employees' first weeks and benefits questions, designing workflows for people first.

KPIs & Success Measures

• Number and scope of manual People Ops processes automated, and time saved per cycle.
• HiBob / Ashby / Remote data accuracy rate.
• Time to resolve employee systems requests.
• Reduction in error rate flowing into compliance-relevant fields.

Benefits

• 25 days PTO plus public holidays (Flexible Time Off scheme).
• Private medical cover / health insurance.
• Monthly stipend for wellness, fitness, and learning & development.
• Remote flexibility (work from anywhere in your home country).
• Enhanced parental leave policies for birth, adoption, or surrogacy.
• Optional access to the Pencil office in The Shard, London for UK employees.
• Flexible working hours.