People Operations Manager

Nex is on a mission to help families rediscover the joy of movement. Created by parents for parents, Nex combines technology and play to deliver fun, social, and interactive experiences powered by natural body motion, encouraging kids and adults to move more, play more, and have fun together. Nex Playground, the company’s award-winning active play system, is purpose-built to get families moving year-round, with safety and privacy as core considerations in its intentional design. It is certified kidSAFE+ COPPA compliant and built to support healthy, active play for all ages and abilities.

Nex Playground features a growing library of 50+ experiences, including motion and dance games, fitness and educational experiences, and Nex Originals. Content includes collaborations with partners like Hasbro, Sesame Workshop, and NBCUniversal. Nex has been recognized by Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, TIME’s Best Inventions, and Parents’ Best Entertainment System for Families, and has earned Red Dot, IDEA, and Core77 international design awards. We encourage you to explore Have Fun and Is Motion Gaming Back?, as they offer a deeper look into our culture, values, and explain how our approach to motion gaming differs from previous generations.

Location: Hong Kong
Type: Full-time
Reports to: Chief of Staff

The Role

As People Operations Manager, you will lead the design and implementation of our people infrastructure, focusing on systems, processes, compliance, and day-to-day employee experience. You will collaborate closely with leadership, managers, and HR, building scalable workflows and solutions that support rapid growth, culture, and engagement. This is a builder role — ideal for someone passionate about creating and optimizing operations, not just maintaining them. This role is perfect for a systems-thinking builder who has lived through the complete startup journey. You'll create order from chaos and establish the operational excellence that enables sustainable growth.

What You’ll Do

As People Operations Manager, you’ll play a hands-on role in delivering an exceptional employee experience as we scale, and ensuring the People Ops function runs smoothly and consistently. You’ll:

• Build employee lifecycle operations — including onboarding, offboarding, internal transitions, and compliance tracking with attention to detail and care
• Maintain and improve core People systems (e.g. Lattice, Notion), ensuring data accuracy, accessibility, and alignment across tools
• Create comprehensive documentation for People Ops — from SOPs and checklists to internal FAQs and templates that make processes easier to follow
• Design, administer and improve cyclical People programs such as performance reviews, engagement surveys, promotions, and benefits enrollment
• Coordinate with cross-functional partners in HR, Legal, Finance, and Talent Acquisition to ensure timely execution of people-related workflows, such as hiring, payroll, contract updates, and international expansion
• Respond to employee and manager inquiries with a thoughtful, human-first approach while building self-service resources and knowledge bases
• Identify and lead operational improvement initiatives that reduce manual effort, improve process clarity, and prepare systems for rapid scale
• Support employee experience initiatives including communications, events, offsites, and engagement programs that reinforce our company values and employee engagement
• Create scalable workflows for global operations enabling consistency across distributed teams and international locations
• Support talent planning, organizational planning and learning and development planning in collaboration with the Chief of Staff and Talent Acquisition team.

This role requires someone who thrives in building something from nothing and can balance hands-on execution with strategic systems thinking.

You may be a right fit for this role if you:

• At least 5–8 years relevant experience in People Operations, HR, or related fields, with at least 2 years in a fast-paced, scaling startup environment.
• Aligns to Nex’s values - refer to these Substack posts for more details - The Language We Use, The Promises We Made, The Differences We Leverage.
• Systems thinker with a track record in designing and optimizing people processes for scalability and flexibility.
• Proven ability to independently manage and improve People Ops programs and systems, including onboarding, offboarding, benefits, and HR tools
• Talent for documentation and internal communication — you know how to make complex workflows and change management feel clear, navigable, and employee-friendly
• Strong organizational skills and an eye for detail, especially when it comes to data accuracy, process documentation, and compliance requirements
• A service-oriented approach to internal support — you enjoy helping others, solving problems, and being the go-to for People Ops questions
• Comfort working cross-functionally with teams like HR Ops, Legal, Finance, and Talent Acquisition to align on processes and timelines
• Strong project management and problem-solving skills; comfortable owning and iterating programs from the ground up.
• High emotional intelligence, ability to navigate sensitive employee issues and build collaborative relationships across teams.
• Comfortable with rapid iterations of project deliverables to meet the evolving needs of the organization.
• Personal Scalability: Demonstrates ability to grow operational capabilities alongside business growth.
• Proficiency in Cantonese and English.

Bonus Points

• Familiarity with tools such as Slack, Lattice and Notion
• Have worked in a distributed, remote/hybrid startup environment
• Have experience with one startup failure

We Offer

• Competitive compensation package.
• Flexible working hours and vacation policy.
• Product-driven culture that treasures talents and individual growth.
• Front-row seat and hands-on experience with cutting edge technologies in the evolving gaming field

Nex is located in San Jose, California, USA and Hong Kong. Learn more about us at nex.inc/who-we-are.

We encourage applications even if you don’t meet more than 50% of the requirements — we believe that experience comes in many forms!