Senior People Ops
$150k - $180k USD
About Dust
We're creating a new AI operating system that has the potential to change the way companies operate. Our mission at Dust is to transform how work gets done by letting any team and employee shape the exact agents they need to accelerate their work.
With 70%+ weekly active users, people stick with Dust as much as they do with Slack and Notion. We already are a core part of their jobs.
We're at an exciting stage of our journey and growing fast. We're serving great customers like Cursor, Clay, Whatnot, and Persona, and aim to 5x our growth by the end of 2026.
Dust is a Sequoia-backed company with an experienced and determined team of optimists (coming from companies like Stripe and OpenAI) that likes to focus on users, getting great things done by shipping fast, and doesn’t take itself too seriously while doing so.
Summary
You'll be the operational backbone of our People Ops function, building our People Ops systems, owning the day-to-day execution of HR processes, ensuring pragmatic compliance across US, and supporting our Paris operations.
But this isn't traditional People Ops. You'll reimagine what's possible when you have AI agents at your fingertips. Use Dust daily to automate manual work, surface insights faster, and free up time for what truly matters: building systems that scale and solve complex problems.
You'll establish best practices, be the go-to expert for everything from contracts to benefits to compliance, and deliver exceptional experiences for employees from day one through every career milestone at Dust.
If you love bringing systems to complexity, obsess over creating a great people experience backed with data, and are genuinely excited about using AI to reimagine how People Ops works, this role is for you.
What you'll do
Employee Lifecycle & HR Administration
Build pragmatic and data-driven systems.
Own the employee lifecycle end-to-end: onboarding, promotions, transfers, leaves, and offboarding
Contracts & documentation: Prepare employment contracts (CDI, CDD, amendments), manage HR documentation, and maintain employee files
HRIS management: Maintain and optimize our HR systems, ensure data accuracy, and generate reports for leadership
HR policies & procedures: Document, maintain, and communicate internal policies
Payroll & Compensation Administration
Variable compensation: Manage bonuses, commissions, expenses, and other variable pay elements
Payroll: Own the end-to-end payroll process in coordination with internal stakeholders
Benefits administration: Manage health insurance (mutuelle), provident insurance (prévoyance), transportation benefits
Maintain accurate compensation records in HRIS and payroll systems
Compliance & Legal
US labor law compliance: Ensure full compliance with US employment law, social declarations (DSN), and administrative requirements
Leave management: Administer all types of leave (RTT, congés payés, parental leave, sick leave, etc.) in compliance with US law
Employee relations: Handle HR inquiries, support managers on disciplinary processes, manage work councils
US employment support: Provide operational support for US-based employees (contracts, benefits administration, compliance basics)
Shape, frame, and build/improve systems: below are examples of topics in the backlog of our People initiative stack rank
Create our new onboarding system integrated with our newly set up HRIS
Work hand in hand with the leadership team to roll out our new Eng OS
Encode our check-in and "Spin up DRI" system as we grow to ensure everyone is aware of what is expected from them
and more to come!
Requirements
5+ years of experience in People Operations, ideally in fast-growing startups or tech companies
US employment law familiarity: Understanding of US employment practices, at-will employment, benefits administration
Payroll experience: Direct experience processing or closely managing payroll in US
Operational excellence: You're detail-oriented, organized, and thrive on getting things right
Strong perspective on modern People practices and genuine curiosity about how AI is transforming work
Fluent in English: you'll support employees across geographies
Compensation and Benefits
Competitive compensation: $150,000-$180,000 base salary*
We offer substantial support for relocation (up to 10k€), including finding an apartment in San Francisco and supporting you with the visa procedure
Significant equity package in a Sequoia-backed startup
Health insurance for you and your dependents
New MacBook Pro or Linux machine, monitor, keyboard, etc.
Opportunity to travel to the Paris multiple times a year
Regular team events and offsite
*We can go higher for outstanding profiles.
Location
We're prioritizing building our team with an in-person culture at our offices in Paris and San Francisco, because we value the magic that happens when talented people work closely together.
Why Dust
We're not building yet another enterprise SaaS tool. We’re creating an AI OS that will fundamentally change how companies operate. We believe existing AI models are powerful enough to have a tremendous impact on the world (and will keep getting better). The key is building the infrastructure so they have the right context, and building the best interfaces for humans to interact with them.
We have the unique opportunity to explore and shape the way humans interact with machines while building a product we use ourselves every day.
If you're excited about crafting products that reinvent B2B software and want to join a team that combines the best of startup culture with the backing of top-tier investors, we'd love to talk.
👋 Even if you don't check every box in our requirements, we encourage you to apply. We value diverse perspectives and backgrounds, and we're more interested in your potential and passion than a perfect match to our checklist.
___
Learn how we think and work.
Our product constitution: a story about our mission
Agents at Work - Latent Space podcast with our cofounder, Stanislas Polu (2024)
LLMs reasoning and agentic capabilities over time - dotAI podcast with Stanislas Polu (2024)