Operations Associate

About the role

You'll be the second operator at Paragon. Your hiring manager and partner is our Head of Strategy & Operations, who's spent four years building this function from scratch and wants a partner to extend it. You'll have line-of-sight into every function of the company: people, legal, finance, compliance, recruiting, vendors, IT, and more. Within twelve months, you'll know how Paragon operationally runs better than almost anyone here.

It's a real operator role. Half of it is queue work: payroll, onboarding, benefits questions, vendor renewals, expense triage. You'll find satisfaction in systems that run smoothly and details done right.

The other half is building. Paragon is AI-native by default - we already have a working bench of internal automations, and you'll extend it. You'll build automations alongside doing the work, with the Head of Ops as a design partner.

You MUST apply via our job site on Ashby to be considered for this role. https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/Paragon/66373519-40a0-41d0-816c-7927a0d8d3c9

What you'll own

You'll be close to the actual operating system of the company. The work is detailed, cross-functional, and very visible when it goes wrong. The goal is to keep the basics running cleanly while steadily making the system better.

Employee operations

Run the details behind onboarding, offboarding, access, benefits questions, leave logistics, and employee changes

Keep payroll, benefits, and people data accurate

Turn repeated questions into docs, checklists, and lightweight self-serve resources

Compliance operations

Keep the weekly compliance work moving: platform issues, security requests, evidence collection, access reviews, and follow-ups

Translate audit asks into practical next steps for Engineering, Ops, and other owners

Keep enough context documented that someone else can understand what happened without digging through five systems

Vendors, contracts, and tools

Keep renewals, signing workflows, vendor accounts, and contract next steps organized

Route agreements through the right review, approval, and signature path

Catch the small problems early: stale seats, unclear owners, bad vendor answers, upcoming renewals, and spend that needs a decision

Recruiting support

Keep scheduling, ATS hygiene, debriefs, and candidate communication moving

Help hiring managers run a tight process

Once ramped, help with first-round screens, outbounding, and candidate follow-through where it makes sense

Finance ops

Help keep expenses, reimbursements, invoices, cards, and spend review clean

Work the queues and leave a clear trail behind decisions

Make recurring finance work easy to inspect instead of dependent on memory

Office + leadership rhythm

Own the basic LA office logistics: visitors, parking, mail, packages, supplies, and light facilities needs

Support All Hands, leadership meetings, monthly reporting, planning cycles, OKR follow-ups, and cross-functional action items

Make loose ends visible so important commitments do not disappear

Automations and agents

Notice the repeatable work while you are doing it

Help turn the right candidates into agents, scripts, automations, or better workflows

Keep judgment manual where it matters, and automate the parts that are repetitive, brittle, or easy to miss

A day in the life

8:45-9:15 — Check the queues

Scan Slack, email, HR tickets, recruiting coordination, vendor messages, access requests, expenses, and signing workflows

Separate what is actually urgent from what can be batched

Flag anything the Head of Operations needs to know early

9:15-10:15 — Clear blockers

Answer time-sensitive employee questions

Move onboarding, access, benefits, leave, or offboarding items forward

Confirm candidate scheduling, debrief logistics, or ATS follow-ups

10:15-11:30 — Work the recurring ops checklist

Push forward whatever is live that week: payroll, benefits, compliance, vendors, recruiting, finance, or office

Follow up with owners when something is stuck or unclear

Updat