People Operations Specialist - Legal-Tech Scale-Up - Paying up to £60k in Preston

People Operations Specialist

Location

UK, fully remote

Salary

Hawkwood is delighted to be partnering with a VC-backed, high-growth and profitable legal-tech business to hire its first-ever dedicated People role.

Approaching 200 employees and continuing to scale month on month, the business has deliberately retained the mindset, pace and ownership of an earlier-stage company.

AI is deeply embedded in how it operates, including proprietary software built in-house, and its culture is agile, deliberately favouring good judgement and simple, scalable solutions over unnecessary processes.

Until now, People responsibilities have been shared across senior leaders.

This hire represents an important next step: bringing clear ownership of the employee lifecycle into one dedicated role and building a People Operations function capable of scaling with the organisation.

This is deliberately a hands-on role.

For someone who enjoys combining the human judgement required in People with the possibilities of building AI-enabled operations, this is a rare opportunity to take genuine ownership of a function at a critical point in a company's growth journey.

The business is fully remote and has built genuine flexibility into how its teams work.

Alongside the ability to work remotely from anywhere in the UK, there are opportunities for flexible working hours, creating an environment where people have greater autonomy over how they structure their working day.

What you'll do

• Take end-to-end ownership of core People Operations, including onboarding, offboarding, absence, leave and employee documentation.
• Act as a trusted first point of contact for managers, resolving issues independently and escalating with clear recommendations where appropriate.
• Handle sensitive employee conversations across areas including absence, performance, maternity and other employee matters with empathy, confidence and sound judgement.
• Own and optimise the HRIS, ensuring workflows and employee processes remain accurate, effective and scalable.
• Review existing People processes and identify where they can be simplified, strengthened or removed altogether.
• Use AI tools to build practical workflows, templates and automations that turn repetitive People work into reliable, repeatable processes.
• Support managers with practical guidance and light-touch training as the organisation continues to scale.
• Use existing People data to surface useful insights for leadership.
• Evaluate the existing People technology stack and make recommendations where alternative tools or systems could materially improve how the function operates.
• Shape what an increasingly sophisticated People Operations function should look like as the business continues to grow.

You will bring

• Hands-on People Operations, HR Operations or generalist HR experience, ideally gained within a start-up, scale-up or similarly fast-growing environment.
• Experience operating with genuine ownership rather than as one part of a large, established People function.
• Strong employee relations exposure and confidence handling sensitive or difficult conversations directly.
• Excellent judgement around confidential employee matters, including knowing what to resolve independently and when to escalate.
• A pragmatic approach to process: you'll instinctively look for the simplest scalable solution rather than introducing policy for policy's sake.
• An AI-first mindset, with meaningful experience using AI tools to improve operational workflows.
• Confidence working independently in a standalone role while partnering closely with senior stakeholders.
• An ownership mindset: you work problems through, develop recommendations and follow through on implementation.

We recognise how challenging this current job market is for candidates, and Hawkwood are therefore striving to provide the best candidate experience we can.

If you are interested in this opportunity, we kindly request that you apply via this Linked In advert, as opposed to sending us an email or Linked In direct message.

We are eager to ensure that each candidate application is considered fairly, and receives a consistent experience.

Unfortunately, we cannot ensure this standard if you inquire about a role via email or Linked In message, as it falls outside of our established process.