People Operations Manager

We’re looking for our very first People Operations role at Pok Pok! If you’re obsessed with making a company an incredible place to work, and you know how to design employee experiences with unreasonable hospitality, we want to meet you!

About Pok Pok

Pok Pok is on a mission to raise the next generation of creative thinkers.

We're the team behind the Apple Design Award-winning Montessori app, Pok Pok, and were named one of TIME's 100 Most Influential Companies of 2025. Our award-winning digital toys and videos empower children to think outside the box, dream big, and explore their creativity in a mindful way. We believe screen time can be thoughtful, educational, and just as imaginative as the toys we grew up playing with on the floors of our living rooms.

Pok Pok is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion. We encourage people of all races, religions, genders, abilities and sexual orientations to apply. We want the products we develop to reflect the diversity of the world we live in, and it starts with our own team.

About the Role

As our first People Operations Manager, you will be the foundational pillar of our People Operations function at Pok Pok. You will have the unique opportunity to build and scale the programs, policies, and systems that support our team from the ground up. You will act as a trusted partner throughout the org, ensuring that our employee experience is as thoughtfully designed and engaging as the products we create.

This is a role for a builder who loves to balance high-level strategy with hands-on execution. Whether you’re coaching managers, optimizing our onboarding process, or planning our next in-person team gathering, you will be the driving force behind making Pok Pok the best place to work.

What You’ll Do

• Build the Foundation: Design, implement, and iterate on core People processes, including onboarding, offboarding, performance management, and benefits administration.
• Lead Talent Acquisition: Own the employee lifecycle, sourcing top talent, managing the candidate experience, and partnering with hiring managers to scale our team effectively.
• Champion Our Culture: Cultivate an inclusive, highly engaged, and supportive hybrid work environment that reflects Pok Pok’s values and mission.
• Manage HR Operations: Handle administration, maintain employee records, and ensure we remain compliant with local employment laws.

Who You Are

• A Builder: You get excited about creating systems that help people do their best work from the ground up rather than just maintaining existing ones.
• Empathetic: You have high emotional intelligence, excellent active listening and understanding skills, and naturally create a psychologically safe space for team members to share feedback.
• Organized & Action-Oriented: You are able to juggle high-level strategic planning with the roll-up-your-sleeves tasks required in a fast-growing startup.
• A Clear Communicator: You can articulate complex, nuanced policies simply and effectively, leading team communications with warmth, clarity, and authority.
• Experienced: You have 3+ years of experience in People Operations, HR, or Talent Management, within a fast-paced startup.

Bonus Points if You:

• Have built a People function, or operated one, through periods of growth
• Deeply understand cultures where parents are the customer and kids are the users
• Have experience with kids and families
• Have a genuine passion for early childhood development, play-based learning, or family-focused technology.

More About Us

We're a growing team of passionate, experienced creators based in Toronto. We love animals, music, travel, video games, kids, cooking, yoga, building robots, going to museums, talking about things we're watching right now and playing with old toys. We're from all walks of life and are convinced that's our secret sauce. We're a mom-founded company, too!

Other awesome things about this role:

• You'll have the unique opportunity to build, grow and make your mark joining a fast-growing start-up early on
• Work from our beautiful brick-and-beam office in the downtown core within walking distance to the Eaton Centre, St. Lawrence Market and Union Station
• Flexible hybrid working arrangements
• 3 weeks of paid vacation plus a 2-week holiday office closure, because life outside of work matters
• Competitive compensation including employee stock options and health benefits
• We love field trips, playtesting with kids in our community, toy research, science centres and museums. We have no fun at all.

How to apply

Apply at the link above and share with us what you've built. Your application should include:

• The companies where you’ve had a great impact on the culture. Tell us what you worked on, what the impact was, and what you are most proud of. Explain in your own words why you want to bring that experience to Pok Pok..
• A short video introduction sharing something interesting about yourself that we can’t find on your resume. If you include a short video intro, we guarantee we’ll watch it!
• Your resume

A real human will read your application. If we're interested in moving forward, you'll get a very enthusiastic message from us.