HR Advisor in Manchester

Ryft is an FCA authorised payment institution providing marketplace and platform payments infrastructure to merchants across the UK and EU. As Ryft scales through its next phase of growth, including EU and US expansion, the company is growing rapidly. We're now investing in building a strong, dedicated HR department from the ground up, one that can support our people and shape our culture through this next stage of growth.

We're looking for an HR Advisor to lead day-to-day HR delivery at Ryft, reporting into the Finance Director. As Ryft scales, you'll be the day-to-day face of HR for our managers and employees: the person people come to with questions on policy, performance or onboarding while the Finance Director provides senior oversight and steer on strategy and org design. This is a hands-on generalist role. You'll own the operational rhythm of HR at Ryft: keeping policies current and compliant, running onboarding and offboarding smoothly, advising line managers on employee relations issues, and making sure the basics (contracts, letters, records, right-to-work checks) are handled accurately and on time. In a company our size, you'll also have real scope to shape how we do things, not just administer what already exists.

What you'll do:

• Act as the first point of contact for managers and employees on HR queries, including policy interpretation, performance management, absence, and general employee relations.
• Advise on and support employee relations casework (disciplinary, grievance, performance improvement) in partnership with the Finance Director, ensuring fair process and accurate documentation.
• Own end-to-end onboarding and offboarding: contracts, right-to-work checks, new starter setup, exit interviews, and leaver admin.
• Maintain and improve HR policies and the employee handbook, keeping them current with UK employment law and FCA-appropriate conduct standards.
• Keep HR systems and records accurate and audit-ready (HRIS, contracts, absence tracking, benefits administration).
• Support the annual people cycle, including probation reviews, performance reviews, and salary/benefits benchmarking cycles, with accurate data and timely admin.
• Help managers navigate difficult conversations with practical, pragmatic advice rather than just policy citations.
• Spot patterns across employee queries and casework and flag process or policy gaps to the Finance Director.
• Support recruitment coordination where needed, including offer letters, referencing, and onboarding logistics for new hires.

What we're looking for:

• Proven experience as an HR Advisor, HR Officer, or similar generalist role, ideally in a fast-moving or scale-up environment.
• Solid working knowledge of UK employment law and confidence applying it practically, not just theoretically.
• Experience handling employee relations casework independently, with good judgement on when to elevate.
• Comfortable operating with a degree of ambiguity, since at our size not every situation has a precedent or a written process yet.
• Strong attention to detail and a genuine dislike of dropped admin, since accuracy on contracts, records, and compliance really matters here.
• Clear, empathetic communicator who can flex between supporting an employee through a difficult moment and giving a manager direct, practical advice.
• CIPD Level 3 or 5 qualification.

Nice to have:

• Experience in fintech, payments, or another FCA-regulated environment.
• Exposure to scaling an HR function through headcount growth (e.g. from ~20 to 50+ employees).

What you'll get:

• Genuine ownership of HR delivery at a company where your work is visible and valued, not lost in a large HR function.
• Direct exposure to the Finance Director and senior leadership, with real input into how our people processes evolve.
• A seat at a fast-growing, well-funded fintech scaling in a genuinely underserved part of the payments market.