Director, Global People Operations & AI

About Ethos: Ethos is a leading life insurance technology company dedicated to protecting families by democratizing access to life insurance. Their platform eliminates traditional barriers, offering instant, accessible products with no medical exams, transforming the life insurance experience for consumers, agents, and carriers.

About the Role: Ethos is building a People organization that scales through talent and technology. As Director, Global People Operations & AI, you will define the strategy for delivering People services worldwide, including the Global People Services team, operating model, and automation/enablement strategy. This role involves designing a tiered service model that leverages AI agents and automation for repeatable tasks, allowing employees to focus on judgment, complexity, and experience. Reporting to the VP of Total Rewards & Operations, you will lead a growing team, partner with HR Technology, IT, Legal, and People leaders across regions, and establish governance and controls for responsible scaling.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Own the strategy and multi-year roadmap for Global People Operations, defining how the People organization delivers services across all regions.
• Lead the Global People Services team, setting standards, service levels, quality, and coverage across geographies.
• Set the direction for automation and enablement across the global People organization, establishing an operating model where AI agents and automation handle repeatable work.
• Design and implement a tiered service model spanning self-service, shared services, and expert-level support, with clear routing and escalation.
• Build governance frameworks for AI and automation in People Ops, including guardrails, human-in-the-loop controls, privacy, security, auditability, and compliance across jurisdictions.
• Define and own metrics measuring success, such as service levels, case deflection, cycle time, cost-to-serve, accuracy, and employee experience.
• Lead and coach the People Operations team, including People Product Managers, in process design, agent oversight, and service delivery.
• Partner with HR Technology, IT, Legal, Finance, and People leaders to align global systems, data, and processes, advancing operations through automation.
• Own change management and adoption for new processes, automations, and the tiered service model across regions and cultures.
• Ensure global compliance and data governance across Ethos’s markets.
• Manage vendors, budget, and the tooling roadmap for People Operations and shared services.
• Continuously scale and improve the operating model as Ethos grows and enters new markets.

Qualifications and Skills:

• 10+ years in People/HR Operations, shared services, or people/business operations, including several years leading teams.
• Proven experience building or running a People/HR shared services function and a tiered service model.
• Track record setting automation and enablement strategy and deploying AI or agentic solutions in an operations context.
• Strong operating discipline: service-level management, metrics, cost-to-serve, and capacity planning.
• Experience operating globally across multiple countries, with a working knowledge of regional compliance and data-privacy requirements.
• Excellent leadership, stakeholder-management, and executive communication skills.
• Working understanding of AI governance: privacy, fairness, security, auditability, and human oversight.
• Change-management expertise, with the ability to drive adoption at scale across a distributed organization.
• Sound judgment in handling sensitive, confidential, and high-stakes situations.
• Bachelor’s degree required; relevant certifications preferred.