Technical People Operations Specialist

Who We Are Lightning AI is the company behind PyTorch Lightning. Founded in 2019, we build an end-to-end platform for developing, training, and deploying AI systems—designed to take ideas from research to production with less friction. Through our merger with Voltage Park, a neocloud and AI Factory, Lightning AI combines developer-first software with cost-efficient, large-scale compute. Teams get the tools they need for experimentation, training, and production inference, with security, observability, and control built in. We serve solo researchers, startups, and large enterprises. Lightning AI operates globally with offices in New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and London, and is backed by Coatue, Index Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, and Firstminute. The Way We Work The people who thrive here are builders who move fast, communicate openly, take ownership, and continuously improve themselves, their teams, and our company. Here's what that looks like in practice: Move with Urgency: We move quickly, make thoughtful decisions, and keep momentum. We value action over perfection and learn by shipping. Take Ownership: We own outcomes, not just our individual work. We make decisions that move the company forward and follow through. Communicate Openly: We communicate directly, seek to understand, and create clarity for others. Honest conversations help us move faster together. Build Great Teams: We lead by example, empower others, and create healthy teams where people can do their best work. Raise the Bar: We're always improving ourselves. We learn from feedback, consistently challenge ourselves to grow, and focus on the work that matters most. Think Long-Term: We design for what's next. We create scalable systems, simplify complexity, and use AI and automation to amplify our impact. What We're Looking For We're hiring a data-driven People Operations specialist to build the AI-native People Ops organization Lightning AI runs on. Most companies buy six HR tools and then spend three years stitching them together. We're not doing that. We're building a tailored People operating system in-house that “just works”, including automated workflows for hiring, onboarding, and agentic employee and manager support as products. You'll be reporting to the Head of People Ops, where you'll find the problems, design the fix, and ship it to production while creating a best in class employee and manager experience. We are a small but mighty, high-velocity, and talent-dense team. We value extreme ownership and low-ego collaboration, living by “shipped is better than perfect”. What You’ll Do In one sentence: build, ship and administer People workflows, systems and solutions that make Lightning run better. This is the core of the role. Design secure systems with role-based permissions and appropriate data access. People data is some of the most sensitive data in the company; access control is a first-class feature, not a later hardening pass. Build agents, workflows, dashboards, and decision-support tools that help the People team, managers, and leaders make better decisions faster. Own day-to-day People Operations administration across the employee lifecycle, including onboarding, offboarding, employee changes, HRIS updates, documentation, and employee data management. Support payroll and benefits administration, including employee changes, audits, reconciliations, enrollments, and resolving employee questions and issues. Serve as a point of contact for employee and manager questions across pay, benefits, leave, policies, systems, and other People programs, partnering with the broader People team on escalations when needed. Keep our People data and systems accurate and reliable through regular audits, data cleanup, documentation, and process maintenance. Support recurring People programs and operational cycles, pitching in wherever needed to keep the function running smoothly. Partner with the broader People team to identify, scope, and ship intern…