Manager, People Operations
HelsinkiCompetitive0 applicants
About this role
There are two things that you might have heard about: that Aiven is a data platform, and how AI is taking over the world. Well, Aiven is actually building the infrastructure that makes building agents or AI applications for production use cases not only possible but, most importantly, simple. We aren't just a passenger in this new world-we are building the engine.
From our humble beginnings in Finland back in 2015, we've now grown to over 400 people across 17 countries, achieving Centaur status in 2025. But we're not done yet. We are architecting a "Super Centaur" future, and that requires a new kind of internal operating system.
Responsibilities
- Are you a systems architect who happens to work in People Ops? Do you get excited by the prospect of paying down operational debt and building automated infrastructure that scales across 17+ countries? If building the internal engine for a company pioneering the AI-data era sounds like your jam, then read on.
- Your Mission: Architecting the Aiven 2.0 Operating System
- At Aiven, we view our people (the Crab Cast) as our primary product. As our Manager of People Operations, you are the Lead Architect of the internal systems that power this product. Your goal isn't just to keep the lights on-it's to build a world-class employee experience that scales through technology rather than headcount.
- You will lead a global team of 5-7 specialists across the US, APAC, and EMEA, sitting at the intersection of Business Velocity, Regulatory Precision, and AI-Driven Efficiency.
- In concrete terms, this means you'll:Engineer Efficiency: Lead the transition from manual Jira and HiBob tasks to seamless, automated internal systems. Your mandate is simple: if a process can be handled by an agent, it should not be performed manually.
- Own the Workforce Lifecycle: Act as the custodian of the Aiven Insider journey. From high-stakes onboarding to frictionless offboarding, you own and translate company policies into scalable processes.
- Master Data & Compli