What are the responsibilities and job description for the People Operations Specialist position at Astronomer?
Astronomer empowers data teams to bring mission-critical software, analytics, and AI to life and is the company behind Astro, the industry-leading unified DataOps platform powered by Apache Airflow®. Astro accelerates building reliable data products that unlock insights, unleash AI value, and powers data-driven applications. Trusted by more than 800 of the world's leading enterprises, Astronomer lets businesses do more with their data. To learn more, visit www.astronomer.io.
About This Role
As a People Operations Specialist at Astronomer, you'll sit at the heart of the People team — owning the systems, data, and processes that power a great employee experience from day one to last day. You'll partner closely with recruiters, hiring managers, People Partners, and leadership to keep hiring running smoothly and employees well-supported. This is a hands-on, execution-focused role for someone who loves turning messy, manual processes into clean, scalable systems. Based in New York City, you'll thrive here if you're equal parts detail-obsessed operator and service-minded teammate.
What You Get To Do
At Astronomer, we value diversity. We are an equal opportunity employer: we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.
About This Role
As a People Operations Specialist at Astronomer, you'll sit at the heart of the People team — owning the systems, data, and processes that power a great employee experience from day one to last day. You'll partner closely with recruiters, hiring managers, People Partners, and leadership to keep hiring running smoothly and employees well-supported. This is a hands-on, execution-focused role for someone who loves turning messy, manual processes into clean, scalable systems. Based in New York City, you'll thrive here if you're equal parts detail-obsessed operator and service-minded teammate.
What You Get To Do
- Own and continuously improve end-to-end recruiting operations, including ATS workflows, interview scheduling, and coordination in Ashby.
- Build and maintain dashboards tracking pipeline health, conversion rates, time-to-fill, and other key hiring metrics for People leadership.
- Manage employee data in Workday across the full lifecycle — hires, transfers, promotions, and terminations — with a focus on accuracy and data integrity.
- Execute seamless onboarding and offboarding processes in partnership with IT, Payroll, Benefits, and People team.
- Run the company's exit interview program end to end, including scheduling, survey analysis, and synthesizing themes to inform retention strategies.
- Support execution of performance reviews, engagement surveys, and company-wide people programs, including coordination, communications, and reporting.
- Serve as a trusted point of contact for employees and managers on HR inquiries across the full lifecycle.
- Identify and implement process improvements that make People operations more scalable, efficient, and well-documented.
- Actively identify and implement AI-powered tools and workflows to automate repetitive tasks, surface insights faster, and improve the overall employee experience.
- 3–6 years of experience in people operations, talent operations, HR operations, or a similar generalist role.
- Hands-on experience with Workday and an ATS, with strong data hygiene instincts.
- Strong analytical skills — comfortable building reports, working in spreadsheets, and translating data into clear recommendations.
- Sharp attention to detail and a low tolerance for data errors; you catch the discrepancy before anyone else notices.
- Ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment without losing track of the details.
- Clear, direct communicator who can translate policy and data into plain language for employees and managers.
- Experience working at a high-growth startup and comfort operating with ambiguity.
- Direct experience with Ashby as your ATS and Workday as your HRIS.
- Experience building or overhauling people operations processes from scratch.
- Familiarity with compensation benchmarking or offer management workflows.
- A track record of designing repeatable systems out of previously manual, one-off processes.
At Astronomer, we value diversity. We are an equal opportunity employer: we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.
Salary : $120,000 - $135,000