People Operations Partner - #2644221

Hi from the Kombo team.

We’re looking to hire a People Operations Partner who will own our day-to-day people operations as we continue our next phase of growth.

Your challenge is to build and run the operational backbone that enables Kombo to scale from 75 to 150 people — while preserving the speed, culture and employee experience that got us here in the first place.

You’ll be the first dedicated owner of the People function, ensuring that Kombo remains a great place to work as we grow, without introducing unnecessary complexity or bureaucracy.

This is a highly hands-on role. You’ll be running core people processes, supporting employees and managers, and continuously improving how things work as the company evolves.

In this role, you’ll operate much more like a builder than a traditional HR manager: you’ll identify friction, design practical solutions, implement them, and iterate over time.

After 12–24 months, you will have built and shaped the people operations foundation of one of Europe’s fastest-growing software companies — experience that will be incredibly valuable for your future career.

If you enjoy bringing structure to fast-moving environments and making things run smoothly behind the scenes, we’d love to hear from you.

About Kombo

Kombo is building the unified API for ATS, HR and payroll systems. Instead of companies spending months integrating with dozens of different systems, they can integrate once with Kombo and instantly connect to 100+ platforms. We abstract away the complexity of handling different data schemas, authentication methods, and API quirks.

Since going through Y Combinator in 2022, we:

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  Grew from 0 revenue to 10+ million ARR and hundreds of customers at a pace that puts us among the ~top 5% of VC-backed startups



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  Scaled to process data for the equivalent of 20% of Germany's workforce



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  Raised $30M+ from Y Combinator, 468 Capital, and other top-tier investors



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  Grew to a team of 60+ working across Berlin and NYC

The Opportunity

As companies grow, operational complexity grows with them.

Every new hire, manager, process, office initiative, policy, and system creates additional complexity. Left unmanaged, this complexity slows companies down and creates frustration for employees and managers alike.

We believe there is an enormous opportunity to build a people function that combines operational excellence with startup speed and an AI first mindset.

Today, many of these responsibilities are distributed across founders, managers, recruiting, finance and external partners. While this worked decently so far, we are reaching a point where having a dedicated owner can significantly improve employee experience, operational quality and scalability.

This is where you come in.

Your Role

At Kombo, you'll own the day to day people operations that allow our team to do their best work. This is a highly hands-on and visible role with direct impact on how every employee experiences working at Kombo.

Your core responsibilities:

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  Compliant Employee Lifecycle: you’ll own the employee journey from offer to exit following regulations in Germany and the US: running onboarding, off-boarding, and maintaining and improving HR policies, and employee data, records, and documentation



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  Support Managers & Employees: you'll serve as a trusted people partner across the company: supporting employees with questions, helping managers navigate people processes and collecting feedback and conducting development initiatives



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  Process Improvement: you’ll improve how the People function runs in practice: identifying and improving inefficiencies and recurring friction points, automating repetitive admin work and improving HR workflows, tools, and documentation



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  Own Office & Team Experience: you'll help create an environment where people enjoy working together: overseeing office operations and workplace experience, organising off-sites, company celebrations and initiatives that strengthen culture and connection across teams.

About You

We're less interested in whether you've worked in a large HR department and more interested in whether you're excited about building and scaling systems in a fast-growing company.

Descriptions that match you:

HR & Startup experience

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  You have 3–6+ years of experience in People Operations, HR Operations, or HR Generalist roles.



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  Experience in B2B SaaS startups or fast-growing tech companies.



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  You are fluent in both German and English.



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  You are familiar with German employment law and HR operations (US employment practices is a plus)

Operational and builder mindset

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  You enjoy building processes from scratch and improving existing ones.



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  You're pragmatic, favouring solutions that work over unnecessary complexity - a good process today beats a perfect one tomorrow.



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  You're highly organised and detail-oriented, able to manage many moving pieces without anything slipping through the cracks.



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  You naturally spot inefficiencies and think about how systems can be improved.

Agency and ownership

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  You are comfortable operating independently and making decisions in ambiguous situations.



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  You take responsibility for outcomes, not just tasks. When you see a problem, your first instinct is to proactively solve it rather than wait for someone else to do so.

Strong judgement and communication

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  People trust you and enjoy working with you because you make their lives easier.



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  You communicate clearly, handle sensitive topics with maturity, and know when to balance empathy with pragmatism.

Comfortable working with AI

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  You actively look for ways to leverage AI and automation to improve quality, speed, and scalability in your work.

What It's Like To Work at Kombo

Our culture is built around two pillars: high ambition (and thus high performance) while providing a fun and supportive environment.

Some tidbits that illustrate this:

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  Our growth puts us into the ~top 5% of VC-backed companies and we have the ambition to keep this pace



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  We aspire to create an environment of few but very high-performing team members (similar to Ashby or Netflix)



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  On average, we get together for a company-wide celebration roughly once a week (larger feature release, big new customer win, anniversary, or birthday)

We also have a well-established meme culture.

Company Benefits

These are some of the company benefits we offer to our teamies based in Berlin:

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  Subsidised GYM membership



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  Breakfast and snack foods



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  Public transport ticket



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  Regular company events + off-sites



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  Budget for L&D



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  Equity

Hiring Process

When you join the hiring process with Kombo, you will quickly notice that we do things differently than other companies: we skip the BS and are considerate of your time. If you have availability, we will go through the entire process in less than two weeks.

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  Talent Screen with one of our recruiters. This is an initial chat to check on the most important and basic requirements for the role.



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  Deep Dive call with the hiring manager (we are hiring across all teams). You will explore together with them what Kombo is like and what you are looking for, and if that’s a match for both of us.



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  Paid on-site day (so that we compensate you in case you have to use your holidays). This is the most important part of our process because you will work in the office on a real challenge and experience the actual Kombo. Read more

Closing

This is a rare opportunity to build the people foundation of a company that is scaling rapidly while still being small enough that your work meaningfully shapes how the company operates.

Every process you build, every friction point you remove, and every HR improvement you make will be felt by every employee at Kombo.

If this sounds appealing to you, please apply — even if you don't match every criterion