People Systems & Operations Specialist

About Lyka:

Lyka was founded in 2018 by Anna Podolsky, inspired by her dog, Lyka, who was suffering from chronic health issues despite being on “premium” kibble. Together with Gabriel Guedes (COO) and Dr. Matthew Muir (Integrative Veterinarian), they built Lyka from the ground up with one core belief: better food can radically improve a pet’s healthspan and quality of life.

Lyka’s meals are vet-formulated and gently cooked from real food ingredients. Delivered via a flexible subscription model, Lyka meals have driven remarkable improvements for tens of thousands of customers, supporting gut health, reducing intolerances, improving energy and mobility, and even promoting hair growth.

What began as home-cooked meals has since scaled into one of Australia’s fastest-growing consumer companies, a vertically integrated, tech-enabled brand that is transforming pet health nationwide.

Lyka now operates from two offices, Sydney (HQ) and Melbourne, with three state-of-the-art food production facilities (two in Sydney, one in Melbourne) and a growing national footprint.

At Lyka, we’re not just selling pet food, we’re pioneering a new standard of wellness for pets. With strong product-market fit, deep customer love, and a track record of rapid growth, we’re now entering our most ambitious chapter yet: building a generational brand and category-defining business with global impact.

About the role:

We're looking for a People Ops all-rounder to join the Pack, someone who finds genuine satisfaction in a clean spreadsheet, brings order to chaos, and wants to be the person managers and the Pack turn to when they need a straight answer, fast.

This is a broad, hands-on role sitting right at the centre of how Lyka runs its people processes day to day, and depending on your experience, we're open to hiring at either Associate or Lead level.

What you will do:

• Act as the first point of contact for People queries from managers and the Pack, providing clear, accurate guidance on policies, pay, leave and process (and knowing when to loop in the right person).
• Own the end-to-end employee lifecycle for any employment changes and off-boarding, ensuring every system-driven process is accurate, on time and a great experience for the Pack
• Be the resident expert and go-to person for our People systems (hello, Rippling ), timesheets and more, keeping data clean and accurate.
• Maintain and continuously improve documentation, SOPs and workflows to keep our processes consistent, scalable and easy to follow.
• Deliver accurate and timely People reporting, flagging trends and insights.
• Own the cyclical people processes (like performance reviews and engagement surveys) and drive People Ops projects end-to-end, bringing precision, reliability and strong project management to how they're run.
• Work with key stakeholders across Payroll, Finance and Legal to keep the employee lifecycle running smoothly end-to-end.
• Support the Facilities Manager from time to time, as needed

What we are looking for:

• Hands-on experience owning and administering an HRIS (Rippling preferred) including configuration, troubleshooting and data integrity — You have a reputation for being the go-to person for the team when it comes to systems and data.
• Ideally 2+ years' experience in a People Ops, HR Ops or HRIS-focused role, and you're comfortable in a fast-paced, high-growth environment. We know great skills are transferable, so we're just as open to backgrounds in Business Operations or Data & Analytics.
• You have an exceptional attention to detail, are highly process-driven and organised with a strong bias to action. You naturally notice when something looks “off” and follow it through to resolution.
• Comfortable working across a broad systems stack beyond Rippling (think Notion, Slack, Microsoft) — you pick up new tools fast and can help others to navigate and understand how to best use our tools and systems with ease.
• Strong written communication skills — you can turn a messy process into a clear SOP, and a tricky message into something warm, simple and easy to action.
• Confident working with data in excel

• Work in a fast-growing start-up, experiencing what goes on behind the scenes to sustain hyper-growth for a start-up with a physical product!
• Growth and Development – Lyka is growing extremely quickly, which means you will have the opportunity to experience different challenges every day and progressively acquire more responsibilities as our facility and team expand. We provide an annual L&D budget for you to continue your personal development.
• Work for a sustainability-focused company – we care about the health of our dogs and our planet. We’re proud to be Australia’s only carbon-negative and plastic-negative pet wellness company and we’re always looking at ways for us to improve sustainability practices.
• Be part of a diverse top-talent team, coming from widely different backgrounds and geographies.
• Up to 18 weeks of paid parental leave top-up
• Wellbeing assistance and tools to take care of your mental and physical wellbeing so you can do your best work
• Pupper parent support to care for your furry friends – flexible arrangements for new pets, pet-friendly offices, discounts, and financial allowance for dog training and care to help them live their best life!

We are committed to building inclusive and diverse teams

Lyka is an equal-opportunity employer devoted to providing a working environment that embraces and values diversity and inclusion. We celebrate diversity, are devoted to creating an inclusive environment for all staff and encourage people of all backgrounds to apply. If you have any support or access requirements, we encourage you to advise us at the time of application.