HR Associate

We're hiring an HR Associate to help run the systems and operational side of People Operations at CEA. You'll own the processes that move people into, through, and out of the organisation: onboarding, contracts, expenses, payroll inputs, state and city tax filings, and the HR systems that connect them. You'll have real ownership of how these processes work, and the role includes projects to improve them with automation and AI. This position reports to Keighly Baron, HR Manager. ABOUT CEA The Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) stewards the movement of people putting effective altruism principles into practice to solve the world's most pressing problems. We're working to build a flourishing future by applying evidence, reason, and compassion to challenges like global poverty, animal suffering, and existential risks. Our work centers on growing and supporting a global community of people who rigorously analyze where they can do the most good and take action on those insights. Current strategic priorities include increasing understanding of effective altruism and its principles, growing the number of people who are motivated by EA principles to take significant action to address pressing problems, and diversifying funding sources for high-impact work. We had significant success in 2025, building momentum within CEA. Our headcount grew from 42 to 66 core staff. Program participation (e.g., events, courses, groups) grew by 20-25% year over year. We merged with EA Funds and are rapidly scaling up our capacity for grantmaking and associated fundraising. In 2026, we've maintained ambitious momentum while building the foundations for a step-change in the wider EA ecosystem's growth trajectory from 2027 onwards. ABOUT THE PEOPLE OPERATIONS TEAM People Operations at CEA is a small team that handles the full employee lifecycle for a distributed, international staff. The team covers compensation and benchmarking, international employment compliance, payroll and benefits administration, onboarding, employee relations, and policy. You'll work most closely with the HR Manager and the People Operations Specialist, and with colleagues in Business Operations, Finance, and Legal. ABOUT THE ROLE You'll take over a set of operational responsibilities that are currently spread across the team. You'll also own projects: rebuilding the onboarding and offboarding workflow, building an HR metrics dashboard and a compliance calendar, and using AI to speed up drafting and routine requests. We expect the role to be roughly half operations, a quarter systems and process projects, and a quarter onboarding, handbook, and employee experience. Early on you'll work with review before anything goes out (contracts, tax filings, payroll inputs). As you continue to onboard, that review loosens, and after probation you will move to fully owning payroll. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES OPERATIONS - Prepare and track state and city tax registrations and filings, including annual benefit reporting. Work with Business Operations to escalate filing notices to Gusto. - Process expense reimbursements in Expensify for the US and UK, including routing reports to the correct approver when needed, and handle Deel expense approvals. Process UK taxable expenses through payroll. - Administer contracts for staff, contractors, and EOR team members. This covers generating agreements from approved templates, routing them through DocuSign, and filing them. Run the contractor onboarding process, including UK right-to-work checks where needed, invoicing instructions, and point-of-contact guidance. - Coordinate pre-clearance checks: run the process, collect documents, and track status against criteria set by the HR Manager. - Collect and validate payroll inputs for the