Operations Associate
Operations Associate at Paragon — Los Angeles, US
- Company: Paragon
- Location: Los Angeles, US
- Employment type: FULL_TIME
- Salary: USD 70000–85000 / year
- Posted: 2026-06-15
About this role
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
Update the tracker, ticket, checklist, or source-of-truth doc as you go
11:30-12:00 — Vendor / contract / finance queue
Check signing workflows, renewals, vendor admin asks, invoices, reimbursements, and card issues
Route anything that needs legal, finance, or Head of Operations approval
Leave notes that make the current state obvious
12:00-1:00 — Lunch / office reset
Handle small office items if needed: visitors, packages, mail, supplies, parking, or facilities details
Reset before the afternoon block
1:00-2:00 — Clean up one system
Update an SOP, improve a checklist, reconcile a messy queue, prep an access review, clean up expense memos, or organize a renewal calendar
Look for the repeatable pattern: what should be documented, templated, automated, or delegated next time?
2:00-2:30 — Sync or async update
Review priorities, escalations, approvals, and judgment calls with the Head of Operations
Share what changed, what is blocked, and what you recommend
Decide where the next focused block should go
2:30-3:45 — Build or improve an automation
Turn a recurring workflow into a first draft of an agent, script, automation, or structured process
Test it against the real workflow it is meant to improve
Document when to use it and where human review is still required
3:45-4:30 — Close loops
Respond to open employee, candidate, vendor, HR, finance, or engineering threads
Move tickets and trackers to their real current state
Make sure no one is waiting because the next step is unclear
4:30-5:00 — Leave tomorrow cleaner
Send a short end-of-day or end-of-week update when useful
Capture tomorrow's follow-ups
Leave the queues cleaner than you found them
Weekly / biweekly rhythms
Compliance digest and expense queue review
Payroll and 401(k) review cycles
Vendor renewal and signing queue review
Recruiting coordination and debrief support when roles are active
1:1s with the Head of Operations to review priorities, escalations, and automation opportunities
The best version of this role is not someone who merely keeps up with the work. It is someone who turns messy recurring operations into cleaner systems.
You're a strong fit if you
Have 1-3 years of operations / HR coordinator / EA / BizOps experience at a startup
Have hands-on PEO or EOR experience (Deel, Rippling, Justworks, or similar)
Have touched at least one compliance platform (Secureframe, Vanta, Drata, or similar)
Are a daily Claude / ChatGPT / Cursor user; have shipped at least one automation (Zapier, n8n, Make, Apps Script, custom script - any tool, any complexity)
Have written at least one SOP, runbook, or process doc that someone else used
Are fluent with the standard SaaS ops stack (HRIS, ATS, expense cards, MDM, e-signature, knowledge tools); willing to learn whatever's in front of you
Default to documenting and systematizing rather than memorizing
Have judgment about what to escalate vs. handle
Write clearly and patiently in vendor and employee threads
Operate well without close supervision
Bonus
Built or contributed to internal tools / agents at a previous job
Familiarity with Claude Code, Cursor, n8n, Make, Retool
State leave law knowledge (CA PFL, WA PFML, NY PFL)
Experience scaling onboarding through 50 to 100 employees
SOC 2 / ISO 27001 / HIPAA evidence-gathering experience
Budget tracking or light variance analysis experience