People Operations Manager (Remote) at Lafiya Nigeria

At Lafiya, we're on a mission to make contraception accessible to anyone who needs it and wants it – no matter where they live. Through our network of dedicated female health professionals – our Lafiya Sisters – we provide information and deliver contraception directly to communities that need it most. Our approach is cost-effective, community-based, and deeply rooted in respect and agency. We operate in hard-to-reach communities that otherwise do not have access to contraceptive products and information. We currently run our core programme across four states in northern Nigeria, managing 280 Lafiya Sisters. In addition to our direct community work, we are building our own supply chain to address widespread supply challenges in Nigeria and are partnering with government stakeholders to realise sustainable financing models for the procurement of contraception. To date, we have supported more than 200,000 women through our innovative last-mile approach.

We're a fast-growing non-profit in the middle of a transition from start-up to scale-up. Our focus is on impact, cost-effectiveness, and ensuring our work enhances the dignity and agency of those we serve.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: People Operations Manager

Location: Remote, based in Sub-Saharan Africa
Job type: Full-time (Permanent)

Position Overview 

• Lafiya is growing fast, and we need someone to own both recruitment and human resources. On the recruiting side, you'll lead all active hiring processes, manage candidate pipelines, and work closely with hiring managers across the organisation.
• On the HR side, you'll own the foundations: onboarding and offboarding, leave and absence, HRIS, performance review cycles, compensation benchmarking, and benefits.
• You’ll sit within the Operations team, which currently consists of two Operations Managers and a Finance & Compliance Officer, led by the COO.
• You'll be the first person inside Operations fully focused on human resources, which means you'll be building and running the processes at the same time.
• You’ll play a critical role in scaling the organisation and strengthening employee retention, helping ensure a sustainable future for Lafiya.
• As we expand into another country in 2026, this is also an exciting opportunity to work with international recruitment, HR operations, and organisational growth across multiple geographies.

What You’ll Do
Recruitment (70%):

• Fully execute Lafiya’s evidence-based personnel recruitment and selection rounds for international and Nigeria-based staff.
• Review and improve our hiring SOP, covering how we source and screen candidates, how we share roles externally, how we do active outreach, and how we design and evaluate test tasks and interviews.
• Build a hiring plan that maps our anticipated headcount needs, flags gaps before they become urgent, and builds in enough overlap and spare capacity so we're not critically understaffed when someone leaves the organisation. 
• Maintain candidate pipelines and ensure hiring managers have clear, up-to-date visibility on where each process stands.
• Communicate proactively with both candidates and hiring managers throughout every stage of the process.

Human Resources (30%):

• Own onboarding and offboarding, making sure every new joiner has a smooth, structured first experience and every departure is handled well.
• Manage our HRIS: keep it up to date, configure it as we grow, and make sure it's actually useful.
• Administer leave, absence, and benefits policies, and be the main point of contact for staff questions on these.
• Run performance review cycles, coordinating timelines, supporting managers, and making sure the process happens consistently. 
• Research what comparable organisations do on compensation and benefits, and propose a clear philosophy for international and in-country salary structure that we can adopt.

Who You Are

• You've been doing this long enough to have opinions. You know which sourcing channels actually work for the kind of roles Lafiya hires.
• You know how to design an interview process that surfaces what matters rather than what sounds good.
• You know the difference between a candidate who interviews well and one who will thrive. And you follow the evidence behind these judgements: the research on structured selection, the data on pipeline conversion, what the best peer organisations are doing and why. 
• You're organised, proactive, and a strong communicator.
• You keep hiring managers, candidates, and staff informed without being asked, prioritise well under competing demands, and naturally build the systems, trackers, pipelines, templates, documentation, that keep things from falling through the cracks.
• You work well asynchronously across time zones and wear multiple hats without resenting it. 
• Lafiya sits between a deeply community-rooted global health organisation and an evidence-driven, fast-moving startup, and we recruit for both.
• You understand what makes that combination unusual, and you're energised by it. Finding the right people for an organisation that doesn't fit neatly into one box is exactly the kind of challenge you’re looking for in the next stage of your career.

Educational Qualification and Experience

• Bachelor's Degree required.
• Professional fluency in English (written and spoken).
• 5 to 9 years of experience in people operations, HR, recruitment, or related fields.
• Have managed full-cycle recruiting and multiple open roles simultaneously.
• Have HR experience: onboarding, policies, HRIS, performance cycles, or compensation. You don't need to have done all of them, but enough to hit the ground running.
• Experience in an NGO, INGO, international development org, or mission-driven startup.
• Preferred: experience recruiting in or for Sub-Saharan Africa, and comfortable navigating international hiring

Skills & Personal Qualities:

• Self-directed and proactive: you figure things out independently, pick up new tools and processes quickly, and don't wait to be told what to do. You take feedback well and adjust fast.
• Evidence-driven: you research what studies show and what peer organisations are doing, and use those inputs to adapt and improve our processes. You don't rely on gut feel alone.
• A builder, not just an executor: you've designed or improved processes before, not just followed them. At Lafiya, you'll need to create policies and adapt them as the organisation evolves.
• Someone who treats candidates well: you understand that how you show up reflects on Lafiya. You communicate, close the loop, and leave people with a good impression even when the answer is no.
• A reliable partner to the team: hiring managers and staff trust that you're on top of things and that their needs are being taken care of. You don't need to be chased for updates.
• Comfortable working remotely and async across time zones: you keep things moving without close guidance and communicate proactively without being asked.
• You are a tactful person who can adeptly communicate about delicate issues to a variety of stakeholders in cross-cultural contexts. 
• You’re comfortable in a start-up environment, meaning that you’re comfortable wearing multiple hats, you’re comfortable in an environment where priorities can change rapidly, and you’re comfortable with ambiguity and situations without pre-established processes.
• You are generally tech-savvy and, for example, you default to a spreadsheet or find appropriate tools when trying to solve a problem. You have proficiency with or are willing to learn to use digital work tools, including Google Workspace, Slack, Airtable, and LLMs.

Why Should You Apply

• Lafiya is at an inflexion point. We're moving from startup to scale-up, expanding into new geographies, and hiring across multiple functions at once. As a result, this is an important and impactful role in the organisation.
• Our programmes can only be as strong as the people delivering them, and the people delivering them are only as good as the process that found, selected, and supported them. Finding exactly the right talent, and building the culture that keeps them, is not a support function here: it is mission-critical work that becomes a multiplier behind Lafiya’s impact.
• This isn't just a support function; you’ll have real ownership from day one. You'll design processes, make decisions, and see the direct results of your work reflected in the team we build together.
• There's also room to grow: as Lafiya scales, this role could grow into leading a human resources department.

Benefits include:

• 30 days’ of paid annual leave 
• Fully paid 16 weeks of parental leave 
• Flexibility in where, when and how you work 
• Working closely with a team of senior leaders who are collaborative, ambitious and serious about impact.
• Visa sponsorship, if required

Compensation
N24,000,000 gross per annum, plus benefits (Nigeria-based). For candidates outside of Nigeria, compensation is adjusted based on cost of living.

Application Closing Date
6th July, 2026. (23:30 WAT)

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should:
Click here to apply online

What is the recruitment process for this role?
We value your time and aim to make our recruitment process as insightful as possible. It includes: 

• Stage 1: Application Form & Assessment. Share your CV and complete a 30-minute multiple-choice quiz to assess your fit for the role. 
• Stage 2: Test Task. Engage in a 2-3 hour task that mirrors the kind of work you'll do with us.
• Stage 3: Interview. This is the final stage, after which we’ll make offers. All candidates will be asked the same questions in a 1-hour interview. It will also be an opportunity for you to ask us questions. 

Note

• We're committed to transparency and will provide feedback from Stage 2 onwards. 
• For any questions, reach out to our Operations Team at: operations@lafiyanigeria.org