Lead - People Experience

About PhonePe Limited:

Headquartered in India, its flagship product, the PhonePe digital payments app, was launched in Aug 2016. As of April 2025, PhonePe has over 60 Crore (600 Million) registered users and a digital payments acceptance network spread across over 4 Crore (40+ million) merchants. PhonePe also processes over 33 Crore (330+ Million) transactions daily with an Annualized Total Payment Value (TPV) of over INR 150 lakh crore. 

PhonePe’s portfolio of businesses includes the distribution of financial products (Insurance, Lending, and Wealth) as well as new consumer tech businesses (Pincode - hyperlocal e-commerce and Indus AppStore Localized App Store for the Android ecosystem) in India, which are aligned with the company’s vision to offer every Indian an equal opportunity to accelerate their progress by unlocking the flow of money and access to services.

Culture:

At PhonePe, we go the extra mile to make sure you can bring your best self to work, Everyday!. And that starts with creating the right environment for you. We empower people and trust them to do the right  thing. Here, you own your work from start to finish, right from day one. PhonePe-rs solve complex problems and execute quickly; often building frameworks from scratch. If you’re excited by the idea of building platforms that touch millions, ideating with some of  the best minds in the country and executing on your dreams with purpose and speed, join us!

Reporting To: Head – People Experience

Role Overview:

We are looking for a Lead People Experience to own and scale end-to-end employee lifecycle operations for a large, distributed, feet-on-street workforce with high monthly churn, ensuring accuracy, speed, compliance, and cost efficiency. The role is critical in enabling uninterrupted business operations through robust onboarding, offboarding, payroll and statutory compliance, particularly in a piece-rate compensation environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Employee Lifecycle Management

• Own and continuously improve end-to-end lifecycle processes, including:
• Offer issuance and acceptance at scale
• Bulk onboarding and induction readiness
• Background verification (BGV) initiation, tracking, and closure
• Data integrity across HRMS, payroll, and compliance systems
• Exit processing, final settlements, and statutory closures
• Ensure lifecycle SLAs are met despite high daily transaction volumes.

• High-Volume Onboarding & Workforce Readiness

• Design and operate bulk hiring and onboarding models capable of handling ~1,000 joiners per week.
• Ensure seamless coordination between recruitment, business HR, HRMS, payroll, and compliance teams
• Drive standardisation of documentation and exception handling for ensuring deployment-readiness from Day 1

• FTC Management 

• Own the entire lifecycle processes for the fixed-term contract employees on third party payroll.
• Guide the team for timely payroll and F&F process for disbursements and the required vendor compliances.
• Oversee process alignment, adherence and exception management with Business HR team, Finance team and Compliance team.
• Review of the vendor (third party payroll provider) and their performance evaluation on process and compliance adherence.

• Statutory Compliance & Remittances

• Ensure full compliance across central and state labour laws, including 
• Registrations and remittances for EPF, ESI, PT, LWF
• Adherence to the Minimum Wages (time-rate floors in piece-rate scenarios)
• CLRA (in cases of third party roll employees) and state-specific registrations
• Timely statutory filings, challans, and remittances
• Own audit readiness for internal, statutory, and external audits.
• Partner closely with Legal, Finance, and Internal Audit for supporting the audit processes

• Vendor & Partner Management

• Manage multiple vendors across:
• Payroll processing
• Background verification
• Compliance filings
• Define clear SLAs, KPIs, and penalty structures for meeting timelines and quality
• Drive cost optimisation without compromising compliance or employee experience
• Ensure vendor scalability aligns with business growth and churn dynamics

• Technology & Process Excellence

• Leverage HRMS, payroll systems, attendance/productivity tools, and automation
• Drive digitisation and straight-through processing wherever possible
• Continuously improve TATs, reduce manual effort, and enhance scalability
• Ensure systems can handle extreme transaction volumes without failure

• Process Leadership and Team Management

• Provide in-depth guidance to the team, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and functional expertise.
• Act as a functional expert within HR Operations, bringing deep expertise and a point of view on the broader business landscape.
• Lead a multi-layered operations team and fostering a culture of rigor, ownership, and continuous improvement

Key Qualifications & Experience

• 12+ years of progressive experience in HR Operations, Shared Services, or Payroll Management with a proven track record of handling high-volume, blue-collar, or salesforce (preferably 15,000+ headcount).
• Deep functional expertise in managing the full employee lifecycle and high-stakes statutory compliance (registrations, remittances) in India.
• Proven experience in designing and executing scalable, automated solutions for payroll and BGV in a high-attrition environment.
• Strong problem-solving and exception-handling capability
• Data-driven decision making
• MBA / PG Diploma in HR or equivalent is preferred.
• High proficiency in MS Excel

PhonePe Full Time Employee Benefits (Not applicable for Intern or Contract Roles)

• Insurance Benefits - Medical Insurance, Critical Illness Insurance, Accidental Insurance, Life Insurance
• Wellness Program - Employee Assistance Program, Onsite Medical Center, Emergency Support System
• Parental Support - Maternity Benefit, Paternity Benefit Program, Adoption Assistance Program, Day-care Support Program
• Mobility Benefits - Relocation benefits, Transfer Support Policy, Travel Policy
• Retirement Benefits - Employee PF Contribution, Flexible PF Contribution, Gratuity, NPS, Leave Encashment 
• Other Benefits - Higher Education Assistance, Car Lease, Salary Advance Policy

Our inclusive culture promotes individual expression, creativity, innovation, and achievement and in turn helps us better understand and serve our customers. We see ourselves as a place for intellectual curiosity,  ideas and debates, where diverse perspectives lead to deeper understanding and better quality results. PhonePe is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to treating all its employees and job applicants equally; regardless of  gender, sexual preference, religion, race, color or disability. If you have a disability or special need that requires assistance or reasonable accommodation, during the application and hiring process, including support for the interview or onboarding process, please fill out this form.

Read more about PhonePe on our blog .