People Operations Manager

About us:

At Saltz, we believe the finest ingredients should be available in one marketplace. For too long, the culinary world has been tangled in a web of distributors and hidden costs, separating passionate chefs from incredible producers. We’re changing that.

Saltz is the digital marketplace where quality and creativity connect directly. We empower chefs to discover and source an incredible variety of fresh ingredients, from local farms to international craftsmen, with complete transparency. For producers, we unlock a global market overnight. An oyster farm can join Saltz today and be selling to hundreds of restaurants across six countries by tomorrow. That’s the power of our platform.

We are a VC-backed, fast-growing startup, and we’re unapologetically ambitious. Our vision is to connect thousands of suppliers with thousands of chefs across hundreds of cities, creating a new, efficient, and transparent ecosystem for fresh food.

About the role:

We are looking for a hands-on People Operations Manager to build, run, and continuously improve a best-in-class HR Operations engine across Europe. This role is both operational and strategic: you will own compliance, payroll, contracts, and people processes end-to-end, while advising founders and leaders on people risks, legal implications, and smart scaling decisions.

You will design systems that scale, bring structure without bureaucracy, and confidently handle complex or gray-zone employee situations. This role works closely with founders and leadership and you will act as a trusted sparring partner to them if and when it is necessary

This is a full-time, remote role with high ownership and visibility.

What you will do:

• Own HR administration across the employee lifecycle: contracts, onboarding, offboarding, changes, and documentation

• Ensure full compliance with EU labor law, including social security, payroll taxes, and statutory benefits

• Manage payroll end-to-end with multi-country providers, ensuring accuracy, timeliness, and audit readiness

• Support entity setup, visas, immigration processes, and collaboration with works councils (Betriebsrat) where applicable

• Confidently manage complex and sensitive cases

• Own legally sound offboarding processes from a compliance and risk perspective

• Own and continuously improve the HRIS (e.g. Personio, HiBob), acting as system owner and internal expert

• Design and automate scalable HR workflows across the employee lifecycle

• Create and maintain clear documentation, playbooks, and internal guides

• Build reporting, dashboards, and processes to ensure transparency, compliance, and audit readiness

• Own leave management processes (parental leave, sick leave, vacation) across countries

• Ensure consistency across regions while thoughtfully managing local legal exceptions

• Partner with founders and managers on leveling frameworks, career ladders, and salary benchmarking

• Support compensation and benefits structures that are competitive, compliant, and scalable

• Advise leaders on whether challenges are primarily people, performance, or legal issues, and how to act accordingly

• Enable managers with clear processes, guidance, and guardrails without slowing the organization down

What you need:

• 8–10+ years of experience in People Operations or startup operations, ideally in high-growth, international environments

• Strong, hands-on knowledge of EU labor law, payroll, and employment compliance

• Proven experience building HR operations from scratch or significantly scaling them (e.g. from 20+ to 400+ employees)

• Deep experience owning HR systems and processes end-to-end

• Comfort handling sensitive, complex, or ambiguous employee situations with sound judgment

• Strong organizational skills and a pragmatic, execution-focused mindset

• Ability to work independently in a remote-first environment

• Fluent in English; German or any other European language is a plus

What makes you an excellent fit:

• You anticipate people and compliance risks before they escalate

• You bring structure and clarity without over-engineering

• You know when to standardize and when local exceptions truly matter

• You are comfortable challenging leadership decisions when needed

• You care deeply about building systems that help people do their best work

What you will get:

• A competitive salary and flexible working hours: you own your targets

• The chance to work closely with founders who’ve built & sold successful companies

• Be the cornerstone of our People function, you build it your way

• Remote-first, flexible working setup

• Growing international team with a high-performance, low-ego culture

Saltz Marketplace, UAB is an equal opportunity employer. We respect and empower each individual who joins us. Saltz Marketplace, UAB commits to a transparent, inclusive, non-discriminatory recruitment process and employment.