People Operations & Culture Generalist
Cellanome
Summary
Cellanome is scaling fast, and the People team is building the foundation to support more than 150 employees across Foster City, San Diego, and Singapore, as well as field-based employees in various states and regions. We're looking for a People Operations Generalist to support the full employee life cycle. You'll bring expertise in systems and processes, along with strong people skills to help design and support employee programs and events. You'll also take on some office management responsibilities to keep our Foster City office running smoothly. This is a hands-on, build-and-improve role where you'll turn manual processes into clean, repeatable ones.
Job description
The role splits roughly into core operations (60%), workplace and events in Foster City (30%), and recruiting / people team coordination (10%), though the mix will flex as our needs evolve.
Core People Operations (~60%)
- Run the employee lifecycle end to end: onboarding, offboarding, and all lifecycle changes in Rippling, with accuracy and speed.
- Administer leave of absence programs across multiple states, coordinating with employees, managers, carriers, and payroll on eligibility, documentation, and return-to-work.
- Own day-to-day benefits administration, including employee questions, open enrollment logistics, carrier and broker coordination, and reconciliation.
- Support multi-state (and cross-border) payroll processing, resolving edge cases and partnering with Accounting on the payroll RACI.
- Keep compliance documentation audit-ready across every state and entity where we operate, flagging gaps proactively.
- Serve as a responsive first point of contact for employee questions, escalating anything sensitive or high-stakes to People leadership.
- Lead process automation across the People function: map current workflows, identify friction, and design and implement automations (Rippling, Greenhouse, AI tools) that cut down manual work and turnaround time.
- Design, launch, and own core People programs, such as onboarding, performance cycles, recognition programs, and policy updates, from needs assessment through rollout, measurement, and iteration.
Workplace & Events, Foster City (~30%)
- Own the day-to-day employee experience at the Foster City office, creating a sense of belonging, community, and engagement that drives team connection and productivity.
- Plan and execute onsite events and celebrations, partnering with the local events committee, from All Hands meeting logistics to team milestones to holiday events.
- Manage office vendors and services (food, gifting platforms, supplies), holding them accountable on cost and quality.
- Serve as the go-to for onsite needs and help strengthen cross-site connection between our Foster City, San Diego, and Singapore offices.
Recruiting & People team Coordination (~20%)
- Coordinate interview scheduling and candidate logistics in partnership with Talent Acquisition, delivering a smooth, professional candidate experience.
- Support offer and pre-boarding logistics so new hires have a seamless path from offer to Day One.
- Keep recruiting workflows and systems clean and up to date.
Requirements
- 5-7+ years in a People Operations, HR (People) Operations, or HR Generalist role, ideally in a fast-moving start-up
- Required hands-on experience across leave of absence administration, benefits, payroll, and multi-state HR compliance
- California employment law experience strongly preferred
- Proven ability to run onsite events and workplace programs from concept through flawless execution
- Demonstrated experience independently managing employee relations matters, including investigations, and designing and launching People programs that scale
- Vendor sourcing, management and relationships around workplace programs and events
- Systems thinking: map a process end to end, find the friction, and redesign it to be simpler
- Experience with ATS/HRIS (Greenhouse/Rippling a plus) and appetite for using AI and automation to optimize recurring work
- Sound judgment on when to handle something directly and when to route it up
- A confident, warm communicator who lands well with employees and managers at every level
- Comfort juggling multiple priorities and shifting gears quickly without losing what matters most
Benefits
- Health Insurance
- Stock Options
- 401(k)
- Work-Life Balance Flexibility
Company overview
Cellanome is an innovative biotechnology company pioneering advanced platforms for dynamic cell biology research. Founded in 2020 and headquartered in Foster City, California, the company has developed the revolutionary CellCage technology and R3200 system that enables researchers to observe living cells in real time at unprecedented scale and resolution. Their platform combines fluorescent live-cell imaging with single-cell transcriptomics, allowing scientists to track cellular interactions, responses, and phenotypic changes over time across thousands of individual cells or co-cultures. This technology generates rich, multimodal data that captures complete cellular "biographies" - integrating imaging, protein expression, and transcriptome analysis from the same cell. Cellanome's mission is to enable scientists to discover what happens inside individual cells and how they interact, which they believe is fundamental to early disease detection, precise treatment development, and transforming health outcomes. The company has raised significant funding, including a $150M Series B round in 2024, and is positioning itself as a foundational platform for the next generation of AI-driven biological models, aiming to do for cell biology what Illumina did for sequencing.