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Senior Human Resources Generalist

Torrance, California, United States
Full Time On-site

Summary

Job Description

The Sr. Human Resources Generalist will lay a foundational role in building and optimizing the core people infrastructure that enables our teams to do their best work—on the ground and beyond.

You'll design, implement, and continuously improve critical HR systems and processes across onboarding, payroll, benefits administration, and people analytics. Partnering closely with leadership and cross-functional teams, you'll help create scalable, compliant, and employee-centric experiences that support rapid hiring and operational complexity.

Responsibilities

Payroll Operations

  • Deliver 100% on-time payroll processing with little to no error rate.
  • Serve as first point of contact for payroll tax inquiries, notices, and agency communications.
  • Ensure timely and accurate payroll tax filings, reconciliations, and reporting across federal, state, and local jurisdictions, meeting all deadlines to avoid penalties.
  • Resolve payroll discrepancies and inquiries within 24–48 hours.
  • Ensure compliance with multi-state wage and hour laws, tax regulations, and reporting requirements.
  • Continuously improve payroll processes to support rapid scaling through automation and system optimization.

Benefits Administration

  • Manage and optimize employee benefits programs (e.g., retirement, leave management, health insurance) to increase employee participation and satisfaction.
  • Respond to benefits inquiries within 24 hours with 95% resolution satisfaction.
  • Support open enrollment and serve as a trusted resource for employee questions.
  • Analyze utilization trends and recommend benefit enhancements.

People Analytics & HR Systems

  • Maintain HRIS integrity and ensure accurate, real-time employee data.
  • Translate data into actionable insights for leadership and workforce planning.
  • Support compliance reporting and audits with a high degree of accuracy.

Onboarding

  • Ensure Day 1 readiness for all new hires (e.g., new hire documentation, new hire checklist, compliance requirements).
  • Maintain 95% new hire satisfaction score on onboarding surveys.
  • Track onboarding progress and identify opportunities to enhance efficiency and engagement.

General HR Operations

  • Support onboarding and offboarding with a seamless, high-quality experience.
  • Respond to employee inquiries within 24 hours, with 90% first-touch resolution rate.
  • Maintain audit-ready employee records with compliance-free deficiencies.
  • Ensure completion of offboarding tasks within company standards.
  • Identify opportunities to automate, streamline, and strengthen HR processes.

Basic Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Business, or related field
  • 3+ years of HR experience with strong ownership of payroll and benefits
  • Experience working in a startup or high-growth environment
  • Proficiency with HRIS platforms (e.g., Rippling, ADP, Workday, or similar)
  • Strong analytical skills (excel required; dashboards/BI tools a plus)
  • High attention to detail and ability to manage sensitive information
  • Solid understanding of employment laws and compliance requirements

Preferred Skills and Experience

  • Experience in aerospace, defense, manufacturing, or other regulated industries
  • Familiarity with government compliance environments (e.g., audits, reporting standards)
  • Experience building or scaling HR processes from the ground up
  • HR certification (PHR, SHRM-CP, or equivalent)
  • Payroll certification (CPP or equivalent)

Leadership Qualities

Bias to Action and Creative Problem Solving. Desire and experience questioning assumptions in ways that lead to break through ideas that are ultimately implemented. Successfully bring in applicable processes/concepts/materials from other industries to achieve efficiency gains. Ability to personally resolve minor issues in development without requiring significant support.

High Commitment, High Initiative. A successful candidate will have a genuine passion for Castelion's mission and consistently look for ways to contribute to the company's technical goals and prevent hardware blockers. Ability to work in a fast paced, autonomously driven, and demanding atmosphere. Strong sense of accountability and integrity.

Clear Communicator. Proactively communicates blockers. Trusted in previous roles to be voice of company with regulators, suppliers, gate keepers and customers. Capable of tactfully managing relationships with stakeholders to achieve company-desired outcomes without compromising relationships. Emails, IMs and verbal interactions are logical, drive clarity, and detailed enough to eliminate ambiguity.

While this position does not currently require a U.S government-issued security clearance, it may in the near future. Therefore, the ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. government–issued security clearance is required. U.S. citizenship is required, as only U.S. citizens are eligible for a security clearance.

About Castelion

Castelion

Castelion is one of the fastest-rising defense technology companies focused on building affordable, rapidly deployable hypersonic strike systems for the U.S. military. Founded by former SpaceX leaders, the company is working to modernize how advanced weapons are developed and manufactured—using rapid iteration, vertical integration, and scalable production to deliver next-generation deterrence capabilities faster than traditional defense programs. Castelion’s mission centers on restoring America’s ability to field advanced military technology at speed and scale.

For job seekers, Castelion offers the opportunity to work directly on some of the most advanced technologies in national defense, including propulsion systems, avionics, flight software, guidance and navigation, missile systems, and advanced manufacturing. The company hires across aerospace engineering, embedded software, manufacturing, test engineering, avionics, cybersecurity, and operations—making it especially attractive to engineers, builders, veterans, and mission-driven professionals who want hands-on ownership of real hardware.

Unlike traditional defense contractors, Castelion operates with a startup-style engineering culture modeled after rapid aerospace development environments. Employees work closely with flight hardware, testing, and production systems in a fast-paced setting where speed, accountability, and execution are prioritized. The company openly emphasizes a builder mentality—giving team members the chance to own major projects and contribute directly to systems with national security impact.

As the U.S. military increases investment in hypersonic weapons, missile modernization, and scalable deterrence capabilities, Castelion continues to grow rapidly through major government contracts and manufacturing expansion. For professionals seeking a high-growth aerospace and defense company where they can help shape the future of national security technology, Castelion is quickly becoming one of the most exciting employers in the defense innovation ecosystem.

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