Urgently Require People Operations Manager in Chicago, IL
Posted 2025-03-14Job title: People Operations Manager
Company: Trala
Job description: Trala is a tech-powered online music school. Our mission is to make world-class music education accessible to every single person on Earth.
Right now, music education is so expensive that the joy of music is available only to the rich and urban. Imagine instead a world where all 4 billion people who will pick up an instrument in the next 30 years could get a world-class education. That is the future we?re creating.
Our first product, Trala: Learn Violin, is a mobile application that teaches anyone how to play violin. We do this using movie-quality tutorial videos featuring diverse violinists, signal processing that listens to students play their real violins and gives instant feedback on every mistake, and a curriculum that prioritizes accessibility and diversity.
Over the last 3 years, we have grown Trala to 500,000+ downloads, students in 193 countries, and support from some of the most famous violinists in the world (such as Joshua Bell). Our students are ages 7 to 70 and live in rural Montana, Lebanon, tiny Pacific islands, Hong Kong, and our hometown of Chicago. They?re not businesses or governments, they?re people. They?ve dreamt of learning violin for years and we?re fulfilling those dreams.
In the next 18 months, we will:
- Roll out new instruments in new languages.
- Grow our 1-on-1 lessons program from 3,000 lessons/month to 10,000 lessons/month.
- Grow our teaching organization from 40 to 400 teachers.
The role:
As Trala?s People Operations Manager, you will have the opportunity to help shape what it means and feels like to be a Trala employee. We pride ourselves on working creatively and genuinely caring about our employees, our teachers, and our students. This role offers a unique opportunity to be the central point of contact for a variety of people and functional areas at Trala. You will be responsible for managing and optimizing ongoing People Operations processes and ensuring smooth day-to-day HR functions. This is a great opportunity to make a big impact at a fast-growing tech company. The ideal candidate will be friendly and helpful, comfortable with handling highly confidential information, and will know how to prioritize work and understand the balancing act of managing multiple projects simultaneously.
What You Will Do
- Manage new-hire procedures, including onboarding, ordering violins (and future instruments), tech, and ensuring all necessary paperwork is submitted.
- Act as the first point of contact for employee benefits information, including sending benefits information to new hires and communicating open enrollment to current employees.
- Lead and manage the company's performance management processes, including workforce planning, employee engagement, and performance reviews.
- Run payroll for full-time employees and the teacher organization.
- Identify gaps in our daily routines and build better processes to improve internal practices and our employee experience.
- Promote Trala culture through birthday and anniversary celebrations, team gatherings, weekly lunches, and other new ideas you want to implement
- Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, or related field.
- 3-5 years of experience in People Operations, preferably within a startup or fast-paced tech environment.
- Genuinely enjoy being around others and helping people.
- Action-oriented and move with purpose, urgency, and excitement.
- Working understanding of human resource principles, practices, and procedures.
- Excellent organization and communication skills and are detail-oriented. If you?ve read this whole thing, you might be a fit.
- Musical background is a plus but not required.
Why Trala?
- As the People Operations Manager, you will help to create a space and organization that people are proud to be a part of, you'll have the support of industry leading mentors, and you'll personally grow faster than you would anywhere else.
- Trala deeply impacts peoples? lives all across the world. These are dreams you?ll be fulfilling, and you?ll have a front row seat to some incredible student stories. Read up about our students at trala.com/student-stories.
- Trala is funded by amazing people like the CEOs of LinkedIn and Duolingo. They?re betting on our team, a team we hope you help shape.
- Trala prioritizes diversity, inclusion, and righting economic and social wrongs. We strive to make our corner of the world a better place
- You?ll be paid well, have great medical/dental/vision, and work with people who are the best at what they do
- Sam: CEO. Violinist and engineer. Architect of Trala?s musical pedagogy. Uses words like ?pedagogy?.
- Val: Executive Assistant. Named after a Steve Winwood Song - you know the one. Has unfinished business with the piano. Actually enjoys playing calendar tetris.
- Learn more about the rest of our team here:
Expected salary:
Location: Chicago, IL