People Operations Partner

Whatnot is the largest livestream shopping platform in North America and Europe to buy, sell, and discover the things you love. Whether it's trading cards, fashion, electronics, or live plants, our sellers are building real businesses across hundreds of categories. We're building live commerce at a scale that's never been done in the West, and there's no playbook to copy. The people here are shaping how an entirely new industry develops.

As a remote co-located team, we're inspired by our values and anchored in hubs across the US, UK, Ireland, Poland, Germany, and Australia. We move fast, stay close to our users, and focus on the work that drives the most impact.

We're one of the fastest growing marketplaces and were recently named the #1 Best Startup Employer in America by Forbes. Check out the latest Whatnot updates on our news and engineering blogs and join us as we enable anyone to turn their passion into a business and bring people together through commerce.

We’re looking for a People Operations Partner to help shape and scale the employee experience at Whatnot. This role goes beyond keeping things running — you’ll improve the systems, programs, and processes that support our team as we grow.

This role is focused on designing and delivering a high-quality, scalable onboarding and employee experience, with onboarding as an initial area of ownership.

You’ll own onboarding end-to-end, including in-person orientation, while identifying opportunities to improve broader People Ops workflows across the employee lifecycle. As onboarding processes become more scalable, you’ll have the opportunity to expand into redesigning other programs, systems, and operational workflows.

You’ll partner cross-functionally to deliver a seamless, high-quality employee experience while building scalable processes that evolve with the company. You’ll be expected to quickly understand existing workflows, identify gaps, and drive improvements with minimal guidance.

Team members in this role must be within commuting distance of our San Francisco hub.

• Own and evolve onboarding as a core People Ops program. Lead the end-to-end onboarding experience, including pre-boarding, Day 1, and initial ramp, ensuring it is high-quality, scalable, and continuously improving as the company grows.

• Design and deliver in-person onboarding experiences. Own and continuously improve onboarding and orientation at our San Francisco hub, ensuring sessions are engaging, consistent, and scalable as we grow.

• Lead cross-functional People Ops initiatives and projects. Drive complex, cross-functional work from problem definition through execution, partnering with Recruiting, IT, Finance, Total Rewards, Legal, and People Business Partners across the employee lifecycle.

• Build and scale People Ops processes. Identify gaps across onboarding, offboarding, and broader employee lifecycle workflows, and design scalable solutions that improve efficiency, accuracy, and experience.

• Maintain data accuracy and support audit readiness across the employee lifecycle. Ensure Workday workflows are accurate, complete, and audit-ready, proactively identifying issues and supporting compliance-related processes as needed.

• Leverage reporting and analytics to drive improvements. Partner with cross-functional teams to build and use Workday reports that inform decisions, identify trends, and improve onboarding and broader People Ops workflows.

• Improve the People Ops helpdesk. Respond to Tier 1 and Tier 2 questions, identify trends, and enhance self-service resources to improve efficiency and employee experience.

• Drive continuous improvement across People Ops programs. Expand beyond onboarding over time to redesign and improve other People Ops programs and workflows.

• Support the team and ensure continuity across People Ops workflows. Share knowledge, document processes, and flex across onboarding, core operations, and systems, reporting, and compliance work as needed.

People who do well at Whatnot tend to be comfortable figuring things out as they go, biased toward action, and genuinely curious about what they're building. They care more about outcomes than credit and stay close to the product and the people using it.

As our next People Operations Partner, you:

• Have 3–5+ years of experience in People Ops, HR operations, or a similar role, ideally in a fast-growing environment.

• Are a Workday power user, comfortable handling onboarding workflows, transactions, and identifying data issues.

• Have experience designing or improving onboarding programs or employee experience initiatives.

• Think in systems and enjoy improving processes.

• Are comfortable operating with a high degree of autonomy and driving projects end-to-end in ambiguous environments.

• Are organized, proactive, and detail-oriented, with the ability to manage multiple priorities.

• Communicate clearly and thoughtfully across teams.

• Take ownership and follow through.

• Are familiar with tools like Google Workspace, Slack, Zendesk, Culture Amp, Navan, and Slab or Notion, and pick up new tools quickly.

• Care deeply about creating a great experience for every Whatnaut.

Whatnot is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We value diversity, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, parental status, disability status, or any other status protected by local law. We believe that our work is better and our company culture is improved when we encourage, support, and respect the different skills and experiences represented within our workforce.