People Operations Manager

Cultivate is partnering with a small, high-performing fintech team in Singapore to find the person who will keep the business running day-to-day. It's a role that owns the office, the employee experience, the vendor relationships, the operations budget, and the internal events and communications that hold a growing team together.

The work is hands-on and varies enormously from one day to the next. Some days that means leading the performance review cycle or negotiating a vendor renewal; other days it means sorting out the Wi-Fi before a client meeting or making sure the catering has actually turned up. Both matter equally in a team this size, and neither sits beneath the remit.

What makes this one different

Our client is looking for someone who takes a problem and closes it out, notices what's broken before anyone raises it, and whose instinct, when faced with something manual or repetitive, is to find a better way rather than absorb the workload. That includes using AI as a routine part of the working day rather than an occasional novelty. There's no expectation of technical depth, but there is a firm expectation of curiosity and a willingness to work differently from how the job has traditionally been done.

What you'll own

• Day-to-day office and workplace operations, the employee, and the guest experience.
• HR operations across the full employee lifecycle, including onboarding, contracts, probation, role changes, and offboarding
• The performance review cycle, end-to-end, from system setup through to reporting, plus support on bonus cycles
• First point of contact for people-related questions, with the judgment to know what to resolve and what to escalate
• Internal and client-facing events, alongside company-wide communications
• Vendor relationships across office, facilities, IT, and HR systems, from selection through to renewal
• The operations budget, forecasting, monthly tracking, and reconciliation with Finance

What our client is looking for

• AI as a default tool. You already use it daily for drafting, summarising, researching, tidying data, and preparing documents, and can point to where it's made you faster. A genuine requirement, not a nice-to-have
• Ownership and agency. You close things out and act without waiting to be asked, arriving with a proposed answer rather than a problem
• Communication. Clear, direct, and confident with everyone from leadership to staff to vendors.
• Range and steadiness. Compliance submission, client dinner, and broken printer in the same morning, without losing the thread.
• You will have 5+ years across office management, workplace operations, and people operations, in a fast-paced scale-up environment, or in a startup generalist role
• Working knowledge of HR operations, employment contracts, and Singapore employment basics
• Practical experience of vendor management, budget ownership, performance review cycles, and HRIS platforms

How to apply

Send your CV along with a short note on one process you've improved, simplified, or automated, what it was, how you approached it, and what it saved. We will speak directly with shortlisted candidates and share full client details at that stage.