People & Operations Administration Lead

About Us

In a context of climate breakdown and technological disruption, Dark Matter Labs focuses on accelerating societal transition towards collective care, shared agency, long-termism and interconnectedness. Our daily work ranges from policy and regulation to finance and data, from governance and democratic participation to organisational culture and identity.

We organise our work around what this transition needs, and the things we want to see in the world. To keep that transparent, we undertake open work in collaborative partnerships to provoke alternative visions of the future, designing how they might look in practice, and experimenting in context to reveal how they could work and enable the necessary change. We currently have legal entities in the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, South Korea and Canada. More about us here.

About This Role

Dark Matter Labs in recent years has evolved with the work from a close-knit team of 20 members to to a collaborative global network of nearly 70 members. With growth comes transformation. Picture building a bridge while walking across it—that’s the challenge we embrace. We're adapting and evolving our internal processes to ensure that as the work spreads, the essence of who we are remains undiluted and every team member feels valued.

While we've made leaps with new software to counter bias in recruitment and launched an HRIS to unify our team's experience, we acknowledge the transitional phase we're in. Think of it as moving into a new home, where we're still deciding on the décor and functionality of each space. We’re firm believers in streamlining operations, so that our attention remains on nurturing the team rather than getting bogged down by busywork.

Pay structures, review cycles, contracting, and onboarding—each of these areas is evolving. We’re designing contracts that center mutual thriving. We aim to give every new member a warm introduction to our unique way of working, characterized by integrity, self-management, and interdependence. And as our members transition out, we wish to part ways with the same warmth and care with which we welcomed them.

We're looking for someone who can provide rigour, stability and care to the team through on-time, diligent and consistent execution of core processes. Knowing that everything is made possible by a solid foundation, you are passionate about world-class administration and operations and how this creates care and space.

Focus Area 1 - Hiring and Onboarding administration - 30%

• Draw up offer letters and first draft contracts for review; take reference information and ID data and maintain personnel files during onboarding and throughout their time in Dm.
• Set new team members up on Dm’s tech infrastructure and activate people across the team to ensure that their onboarding process has been fully lined up.
• Create first draft onboarding packs for other team members to fill out; ensure that pay and benefits letters and other key information is sent in advance and any other details are processed on time
• (Facilitate onboarding calls, and check-in with new team members one month in and capturing and following up on actions resulting from that - optional)

Focus Area 2 - Ongoing people administrative support - 20%

• Be a point of contact for the team regarding their confidential personnel data, answering questions and liaising with the operations team to execute actions as needed.
• Be a first point of contact for the team (including on slack) for questions relating to people policies, processes, data or otherwise; ensure that the shared Notion portal has up to date and accurate information relating to people processes and operations.

Focus Area 3 - Feedback, review and contract process management - 30%

• Hold processes to gather and prepare feedback information from across the team in a timely way for contract extensions and reviews across all geographies.
• Steward timely decision-making from the team so that we can hold a caring process for team members approaching their contract or mutual trial period end dates.
• Take part in review and feedback calls (hosted by members of the People circle), capturing notes and sharing and recording key information so that all can follow through. Where needed, take legal advice, notify Directors and/or take other steps that may be necessary for the context.

Focus Area 4 - Offboarding process management - 20%

• Refine and execute offboarding workflows to ensure a smooth transition for every member.
• Convey information to the OrgDev team relating to offboarding (re leave, payroll etc) to ensure critical processes are accurate
• Schedule and enable retrospective calls for departing team members (these are hosted by members of the People circle), capturing learnings and insights and executing follow up actions that result from them.
• Ensure the tech and other offboarding steps are finalised for each person to meet GDPR and other needs.

We expect that the balance between these areas will regularly shift and rebalance, with an overall split as summarised above.

You Might Thrive In This Role If...

• You're passionate about operations and administration and how these done well can unleash a system and team for brilliance. You thrive in the rigour and details of day-to-day processes and want to build your leadership here. (Note: we are looking for a team member who is passionate about this kind of role long-term)
• Detail-oriented is your middle name. Whether it's refining a contract or designing a new onboarding process, you don't let anything slip through the cracks.
• Empathy and emotional intelligence guide you. You recognize the human element in operations and policies, understanding that at the heart of great administration is care, human(e) communication and processes that consider the well-being of the people involved.
• You're a proactive problem-solver. Instead of waiting for challenges to escalate, you anticipate them and take initiative to find solutions.
• Like all of Dm, you're captivated by The Boring Revolution. You see the transformative potential in refining, streamlining, and perfecting the ‘seemingly mundane’.
• Remote work resonates with you. You thrive in decentralized settings and understand the nuances and challenges of working in a largely remote organization.

Who You Might Work Most Closely With

• Nasim Forootan. Culture and Learning Holder
• Melissa Watkins. People Co-Holder & Dutch entity co-holder
• Anna Rosero. People and Team Co-Holder (currently on maternity leave)
• Adam Purvis. Space-Holder/Facilitator and Scotland Lead.
• Annette Dhami, Governance and Organisational Development Holder
• Rob de Jong, Alizé de Buck, Jordan Brown. Local entity holders

Will also work closely with holders of missions, projects, dark matter layers, deep code innovations across the DM ecosystem.

You will occasionally work in collaboration with DM partners, and in all of our work we intend to share learning and practice to communities beyond the DM platform.

How we work

We're a multi disciplinary and distributed team based around the globe. What's important to us is using the context and local conditions of projects to grow our knowledge and use it to iterate our knowledge and practice across all of our work. We pride ourselves on learning, experimentation and intuition, and look to provide members of the team ways in which they can grow their own knowledge and practice. We view projects, processes and how we work as an evolving design that you would be part of shaping.

Here's a little on how we currently organise:

• We all work remotely, with flexible working hours around schedules (most people do main hours between 9-6).
• We work as dynamic hierarchies. We don’t organise through fixed line managers or fixed JDs but through teams and circles - we have different areas of expertise and focus and we pick up and shed roles as required. This requires good communication, high emotional intelligence and levels of trust.
• We run on a series of digital tools that we use daily to coordinate, learn and govern together (Slack, Notion, GSuite, Miro among them)
• We're organised in multidisciplinary working groups that span mission, deep codes, projects, orgdev and operations. Each working group is flexible and spans a series of projects to form a portfolio work.
• This setup allows us to be a platform organisation and to nurture and grow ideas the team are passionate about and believe are needed, and align advance our core values and mission,
• In time and experience, we invite everyone to grow our portfolio of work as a way to grow our collective skills, knowledge, and ideas – this is an invitation, not an obligation.

You will be supported by the wider Dark Matter Labs team (currently circa 60 around the globe) and connect with them remotely on a day-to-day basis. We also engage regularly for joint learning and development which include:

• DM downloads – a regular meet up (usually online) to share learning across key areas of our work.
• Whole team StandUps - a chance to collectively reflect on what we are learning, how we are showing up and what we are sensing
• Personal development and learning sessions - org-wide sessions for us to take leadership in our own personal development; including building our muscles of self-reflection and the characteristics required for trust.
• Virtual, hybrid and face-to-face gatherings

Your Background

We are looking for someone who has gone through learning loops of executing and leading operations and administration in a medium-sized team, who understands the nuances of this and is passionate about doing reading in this area.

This aside, we are completely open to what your background and experience might be.

Some areas of experience that might make the learning curve easier (but are not strictly essential) are:

• A background in Human Resources, Organisational Development, Project Management, Human-rights or Employment law are helpful but not essential for the role
• Experience of dynamic or self-managing organisations and/or international organising

We highly value lived experience as a form of expertise and we consider having a broad and diverse range of lived experience within the team, as being critical for us to be able to do our best possible work together and to create a range of spaces and accommodate a broad spectrum of life experience into our planetary team.

Dark Matter Labs continues to educate, question and critically review ourselves on how we can improve. We recognise and celebrate the true value of a safe and accepting working environment that - among other things - a diverse team with distributed power can unlock, and work to address our underlying biases and power structures that can prevent that from materialising.

This type of work requires the willingness to work on yourself, your relationships with power, the assumptions and experiences that influence how you think, and more.*

*We recognise that our work deals with some existential questions and content that can be triggering. We have a team focused on the team's mental health and personal development and we continue to incrementally build the necessary psychological infrastructures for this work.

We know that there is more that we can do to make this recruitment more accessible, particularly if you have experienced exclusion, disadvantage or discrimination, or if you have particular accessibility needs. We would be happy to provide any further support that you may require - please get in touch so that we can work together to provide that.

Pay

Our approach to pay is not based on favoring one skill over another or rewarding hierarchical power dynamics. Instead, we recognize that everyone possesses unique and exceptional skills, and we remove the process of valuing and comparing them. This allows us to focus on unleashing those skills in diverse ways based on the specific context. It gives us the freedom to determine, assign, and assess roles based on what is most suitable for each situation, rather than being constrained by predefined roles tied to compensation.

As a result, our pay is designed not to reward people for tasks done, but to cover living costs so that we are freed to create what we believe is needed in the world. 

Our current base pay for everyone on the team is:

Formula = (((Years experience + 23) (+ 8.82 for freelancers)) *1000) = gross pro rata pay in GBP.

Years experience includes all experience after school completion age (18) - inc work, education, unpaid work (care, volunteering, etc).

We recognise that no formula that tries to do this can fully account for the unique contexts of every person. Therefore we also have a rebalancing process in place to accommodate individual circumstances.

We have recently put in place a range of benefits support across the team, including coaching, learning funds, sabbatical and secondment support, learning funds, workspace funds and more. These were set collectively by the team and vary according to statutory provisions in different geographies - we’ll be happy to confirm the relevant approach for your geography and contract type.

Our holiday policy is a minimum of 28 days/year pro-rata, but we encourage you to take all of the time that you need to properly rest.