Feeny
fonio

People Operations Manager (US) at fonio (New York, NY)

fonio· New York, NY·

Role details

Employment
Full-Time

Job description

About fonio

We grew from $1M to $10M ARR in under 12 months and now serve 10,000+ customers. Fonio is Europe’s market leader for AI phone agents for SMBs. Now we’re expanding globally and into new products. We move fast, take ownership, give direct feedback, and avoid politics and unnecessary meetings. Join one of world's fastest-growing companies.

Your Role

You own everything after a candidate signs, from contracts through offboarding, and automate as much of it as possible. We are looking for someone to build the structural backbone to enable rapid scaling.

  • Contracts & onboarding: Manage employment contracts for all employees (direct and indirect employment), organize equipment, accounts, workspaces, and support relocation of international colleagues.
  • HR tooling & automation: introduce and own an HRIS tool, automate workflows across systems.
  • Payroll: Organize and own internal payroll processes, including variable compensation calculation of all sales teams.
  • Compliance & people legal: Support international hiring, time-tracking, collective agreements, international taxation topics, etc.
  • Compensation: Manage and monitor compensation bands across teams/countries.
  • Events & culture: Organize internal and external events (hackathons, off-sites, etc.)
  • Offboarding: Manage offboarding of employees.
  • Later, people development: Design feedback cycles, L&D, career development (e.g. SDR academy).

What to Expect

  • Solo, end-to-end ownership of everything people operations.
  • Hands-on operational work to build the foundation for automation/scaling.
  • Direct impact: your work has immediate influence on the culture of fonio.
  • Flat hierarchies: close collaboration across departments.

What You Bring

  • 3+ year of People Ops, HR, or Operations experience, ideally startup or scale-up.
  • Knowledge about US labor law, payroll, and collective agreements
  • Structured, hands-on working style.
  • AI and automation/workflow skills.
  • People-first, low ego. You thrive under intensity.
  • Strong English skills.

What We Offer

  • $70,000–$150,000 salary depending on experience + Equity
  • Hardware of your choice
  • Regular team offsites
  • Paid relocation to Vienna for approximately two months
  • Work from our New York office with an ambitious team

Hiring Process

  • 20 min intro call
  • 30 min skill interview
  • 20 min culture call

Why work at fonio

  • Rapid Growth & Impact: The company is in a phase of hypergrowth (40% MoM), and employees are "still early enough that your work will genuinely shape the culture, the product, and the company." fonio.ai/en/careers
  • Culture: Described as fast, committed, and in-office by default. The team emphasizes moving fast and having fun. Most roles are Vienna-based, with the expectation of being in the office most days.
  • Remote Options: Engineering roles are fully remote (within ±3 hours of CET). For other roles, there is a temporary relocation to Vienna for onboarding (1-3 months), followed by relocation to the target market.
  • Relocation Support: The company sponsors travel and accommodation in Vienna for the onboarding period and offers full relocation support for moving to target markets.
  • Team Size: Around 40-50 people, with plans to double by the end of the year.
  • Hiring Process: A 3-4 step process: 15-minute intro call, 30-45 minute skills interview (sometimes with a case study), potentially a deeper skills or leadership interview, and a final 20-minute culture call with both founders. fonio.ai/en/careers

Application questions