Human Resources Manager

Arboreal Management is an affordable housing owner, developer, and property manager across Washington and Oregon. We manage roughly 8,500 units with about 220 employees, and we are growing fast. Alongside our property operations, we build Maynard, our own AI platform for accounting and operations. Our mission is to deliver quality housing people can afford — run by a team that is well supported and well led.

About the Role

We are looking for a Human Resources Manager to be the person our 220 employees actually turn to. This role is centered on employee engagement, employee relations, and the general HR work that keeps a growing, distributed workforce functioning well.

You will handle the conversations that matter: a manager who needs help with a difficult performance situation, an employee who raises a concern, a site team whose morale has slipped, a policy question nobody has a clean answer to. You will investigate what needs investigating, coach managers through what they should handle themselves, and build the programs that keep people connected to the company as we grow.

We already have a full-time recruiter and a dedicated payroll administrator, so you are not carrying those functions. You will partner with both — but your attention stays on the people, not the pipeline or the pay run.

This is a hands-on role reporting to the CFO. It suits someone who is genuinely good with people, keeps their judgment steady in messy situations, and can turn a recurring problem into a process instead of handling it fresh every time.

What You’ll Do

Employee relations

• Be the first point of contact for employees across the company — corporate, site teams, and our Philippines-based staff — on questions, concerns, and conflicts.

• Conduct workplace investigations: intake, interviews, documentation, findings, and recommended action. Escalate high-risk matters appropriately.

• Coach managers through difficult conversations, documentation, performance improvement plans, accommodations, and terminations — so they handle them well and consistently.

• Mediate conflicts between employees and between teams before they escalate.

• Spot patterns across complaints, exits, and site-level issues, and bring the underlying problem forward rather than resolving the same case repeatedly.

Engagement and culture

• Own employee engagement: run surveys, read the results honestly, and turn them into changes people can see.

• Build and run recognition programs, and make sure good work at the site level gets noticed at the corporate level.

• Run company-wide communications and connective events across a workforce spread over many properties and two countries.

• Conduct stay and exit interviews; track retention and turnover by role, site, and manager, and report what the numbers say.

• Look after the day-to-day employee experience for our offshore team, not just the US staff.

Performance and development

• Run the performance review cycle end to end — calibration, scheduling, completion, and follow-through.

• Identify where managers need training and either deliver it or bring in someone who can.

• Support career-path conversations, especially for site staff who want to move up from maintenance or leasing into management.

• Maintain and deliver our onboarding and training programs, including facilitating new-hire orientation.

General HR operations

• Administer benefits enrollment, changes, and open enrollment; act as the day-to-day contact for employees and our broker.

• Manage leave, accommodations, PTO, and L&I claims from first notice through return-to-work.

• Own the HRIS as the system of record for employee data, org structure, and documentation, and pull the reporting leadership needs.

• Handle employee-lifecycle changes — promotions, transfers, comp changes, offboarding — and coordinate them cleanly with Payroll.

• Partner with our Payroll Administrator: supply and verify the employee-data changes each cycle depends on. (Payroll processing is theirs, not yours.)

Compliance and policy

• Keep us compliant with federal, Washington, and Oregon employment law, and coordinate with our Philippines team on local requirements.

• Own the employee handbook and HR policies: keep them current, and make sure people understand them.

• Maintain personnel files, I-9s, and confidential records to audit standard.

• Keep required postings, filings, and training assignments current.

Hiring support

• Partner with our full-time Recruiter on hiring plans, offer decisions, and comp consistency across roles.

• Support hiring managers on interview quality, selection criteria, and internal candidates.

• Own the handoff from accepted offer to first day so onboarding is seamless.

What You Bring

• 7+ years of progressive HR experience with real depth in employee relations.

• Direct experience conducting workplace investigations and documenting them defensibly.

• A track record of coaching managers — not just advising them, but changing how they handle their people.

• Experience running engagement, retention, or culture programs and measuring whether they worked.

• Working knowledge of federal and multi-state employment law, including Washington and Oregon.

• Experience with benefits administration, leave management, and an HRIS.

• Sound judgment and real discretion — you will hold things people tell no one else.

• The credibility to be trusted by a maintenance tech and by the executive team in the same week.

• Bachelor’s degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, or a related field, or equivalent experience.

• SHRM-CP, SHRM-SCP, PHR, or SPHR.

Nice to Have

• Experience in property management, affordable housing, hospitality, healthcare, retail, or another distributed, multi-site workforce.

• Experience supporting an offshore or international team.

• Experience with Rippling, or similar HRIS.

• Comfort using AI and automation to cut manual HR work.

How We Work

These are the values we hire and operate against:

• Inclusion and diversity — we hire inclusively and expect people to be treated fairly.

• Teamwork — we work across departments and keep communication open in both directions.

• Data-based decision making — bring numbers, not impressions.

• Questioning conventional wisdom — look for a better way rather than defending the current one.

• Respect — treat people with dignity, especially in hard conversations.

• Ownership and initiative — own the outcome, not just the task.

Location and Schedule

This role is based in Seattle, working from our Eastlake office roughly 2–3 days per week with flexibility to work remotely otherwise. Expect regular travel to properties across Washington and Oregon — being visible to site teams is part of the job — and some coordination with our Philippines-based team outside standard Pacific hours.

Compensation and Benefits

$95,000 – $110,000 per year, depending on experience, plus an annual bonus.

Equal Opportunity

Arboreal Management is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodation to applicants with disabilities — let us know if you need one during the hiring process.