Job type: Full-time, Exempt

Location: Fully remote, US Only (must of us work within Pacific, Mountain, Central, or Eastern timezones)

US salary range: $64,000–$78,000 USD

Reports to: Amber Small-Atkins, People & Culture Strategy and Operations Leader

Application Deadline
August 28, 2026

ABOUT NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP

Nielsen Norman Group has been the leading research and consulting firm in user experience for more than 25 years. We’re small and fully remote, with a global team and clients across nearly every industry. Our client’s work demands rigor and clarity, and we’re building our internal operations to hold the same standard.

We move like a startup — high ownership, few layers, and a bias toward doing things well over doing them perfectly the first time. People & Culture is in an active growth phase, building infrastructure to fill gaps that have been filled by informal practice, and this role is central to that. You’ll also be encouraged to build real fluency with our AI tools and use them to work faster, while owning the quality and accuracy of everything you produce.

THE OPPORTUNITY

This is hands-on and operationally broad: part People & Culture generalist, part business operations. You’ll be the day-to-day operational engine of the People function and a good deal of what keeps the business running behind the scenes. It’s a permanent, full-time role with benefits from the start.

You’ll report to the People & Culture Strategy and Operations Leader. Someone who knows the operational layer, will train you properly, and will hand off work as you’re ready for it. What we need back is that you own what’s yours, close your own loops, and say when you’re unsure instead of guessing. This isn’t an entry-level seat: we’re looking for three to five years, meaning enough experience to run a benefits deadline or an offboarding without a script, and the judgment to know which questions to bring back.

An honest note on what you’d inherit. The People function here is young; some processes are clean and documented, others live in one person’s head, and part of the job is making them solid. You won’t be doing it alone: Finance is our closest partner, and you’ll work regularly with leadership and individual contributors across the business. If you need a finished playbook and a large team around you, this isn’t the right seat.

WHAT YOU’LL OWN

People & Culture is the core of this role. The business-operations layer is a natural extension of it, not a separate track, and you won’t be running both at full speed on day one. Operational ownership builds over your first year, with support.

The employee lifecycle

  • Onboarding from signed offer through the 90-day check-in: equipment, systems access, benefits enrollment, and welcome communication
  • Offboarding end-to-end: access revocation, equipment return, COBRA through ExtensisHR and Oyster, and post-departure documentation
  • Employee records accurate across our systems of record, with access provisioned and removed along our data-classification tiers

Benefits, payroll, and leave

  • Primary liaison to ExtensisHR, our PEO and HRIS platform
  • Semi-monthly payroll 
  • HR compliance calendar: required notices, filings, and employment verifications prepped for submission

The day-to-day

  • The People Operations intake queue — triage, assign, and close out within our response times
  • First point of contact for policy and process questions: closing loops, and escalating anything precedent-setting
  • Review-cycle logistics, and the career-band and role-expectation docs kept current
  • Recruiting support: scheduling, candidate communication, and requisition tracking
  • Culture support: team events, surveys, and milestone celebrations
  • SOPs and process guides kept organized, current, and easy for a manager to follow

Growing into the business-operations layer

  • Vendor contracts and software renewals, with a flag on anything worth renegotiating
  • State registration and tax account filings prepped for Finance to submit
  • Operational friction surfaced with recommendations — broken processes, access gaps, unclear ownership

Who you are

  • Organizational rigor and follow-through. You keep systems of record clean, close loops, and don't let deadlines slip. This matters more than anything else on the list
  • Three to five years across benefits, leave, compliance, and the employee lifecycle, where you personally owned recurring processes end-to-end
  • A precise, jargon-free writer — the kind of email an employee actually understands
  • Self-directed in a remote, asynchronous environment
  • Genuinely interested in the business-operations side too, from vendor management to documentation
  • Comfortable building infrastructure as you go, in a lean company where the playbook isn't finished

What we offer

You’d be working alongside the best in UX, with real ownership early in a function that’s actively being built. We’re small and fast-moving, which means a genuine hand in how NN/G runs rather than executing someone else’s system. In addition to working alongside a great team, full-time employees have access to the following benefits:

  • Medical, dental, vision
  • HSA (Health Savings Account)
  • Unlimited PTO
  • The option for bonuses based on company and individual performance
  • Flexible work arrangements
  • Eligible after 1 year of employment:
    • 401(k) with employer contributions for eligible employees.
    • ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) for eligible employees

Helpful, but not required. PEO experience (ExtensisHR, Rippling, Justworks, Gusto); an EOR like Oyster or Deel; SHRM-CP or PHR; a background at a 50–200 person company where building process was part of the job; fluency with Notion, Slack, and Google Workspace; time spent inside a benefits renewal cycle.

HOW THE PROCESS RUNS — AND HOW TO APPLY

  1. Submit your application, including your resume, and answer the short written exercise included in Section 3. Budget for about 30-45 minutes.
  2. An interview with the P&C leader covering your experience, how you work, and your exercise. Plan for about an hour
  3. Conversations with a few members of our team
  4. References, then offer, and start date

Unpaid exercises get asked of candidates too often. Ours is short, it’s the only one, and it replaces a cover letter.

To apply. Send your resume and the written exercise through our application form, People & Culture Generalist — Application. Please send any questions to hr@nngroup.com.

Resumes or exercises submitted via email will not be accepted. 

Nielsen Norman Group is an equal opportunity organization. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic. This description is not an exhaustive list of tasks.