HR Operations Lead

About the Role

ENGIE Saudi Arabia is seeking an HR Operations Lead to manage end-to-end HR operational excellence across ENGIE KSA. This full-time position is based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and requires 8-10 years of experience. The role ensures consistent, compliant, and efficient delivery of core HR services, including People Service Desk, Recruitment Operations, Learning Administration, Payroll & Time, and People Administration.

The HR Operations Lead acts as the backbone of HR delivery, enabling HR Business Partners and business leaders to focus on strategic priorities by ensuring robust processes, data accuracy, service quality, and governance across all people operations. This role reports to the HR Director – KSA and has direct reports including the GRO (Government Relations Officer) and HR Operations team members.

Key Responsibilities

• HR Operations & Service Delivery: Own and manage HR Operations for KSA, ensuring timely, accurate, and compliant delivery of all HR services. Lead the People Service Desk, overseeing employee, manager, and HR queries, and ensuring clear SLAs, escalation paths, and service quality. Drive standardization, consistency, and continuous improvement of HR processes across entities and sites.
• Recruitment Operations: Manage end-to-end recruitment administration in close partnership with HRBPs and hiring managers. This includes advising HRBPs with market and recruitment data, posting job vacancies, sourcing and screening candidates, coordinating interviews, and managing offer build-up, approvals, and documentation. Ensure recruitment processes comply with local regulations, internal controls, and ENGIE governance.
• Learning & Training Administration: Oversee learning administration and coordination, including the creation of learning items in systems, class scheduling and bookings, learner assignment and enrolment, management of cancellations, and tracking and recording attendance and completion. Support HRBPs and leaders in delivering learning plans through strong operational execution.
• Payroll, Time & Benefits Administration: Oversee payroll and time administration, ensuring accurate preparation of payroll master data, timely payroll processing and payslip preparation, and administration of employee payments in coordination with Finance and vendors. Ensure benefits administration and leave management are handled accurately and in line with policy and law. Act as the HR focal point for payroll audits, reconciliations, and issue resolution.
• People Administration & Employee Lifecycle: Manage all employee lifecycle administration, including personal data changes, new joiner administration and onboarding (including externals), contract administration and documentation, and leave management and employee records. Ensure data accuracy across HR systems and compliance with data privacy standards.
• Government Relations Oversight: Provide functional oversight to the GRO, ensuring timely processing of visas, Iqamas, renewals, and exits, compliance with Saudi labor, immigration, and GOSI requirements, and strong coordination between HR operations and government processes.
• Compliance, Governance & Controls: Ensure HR operations comply with Saudi Labor Law and local regulations, as well as ENGIE policies, internal controls, and audit requirements. Maintain documentation, trackers, and evidence required for audits and internal reviews. Proactively identify risks and operational gaps and implement corrective actions.
• Continuous Improvement & Stakeholder Management: Drive process optimization, automation, and simplification across HR operations. Build strong working relationships with HRBPs, Finance, IT, Legal, and external vendors. Provide regular operational reporting and insights to the HR Director – KSA.