Senior Manager, HR, People & Culture

About Big Viking Games

Big Viking Games is a Canadian gaming company focused on building, operating, and growing long-standing online game communities. Our games have entertained players for years, supported by loyal audiences, live operations, evolving content systems, product innovation, and deep player-driven economies.

Our flagship titles, YoWorld and Fish World, have served millions of players over their lifetime. These are enduring live-service virtual worlds with rich in-game economies, virtual goods, social interaction, and long-term player engagement at their core.

We are entering a new phase of modernization and growth, with a focus on stronger operating discipline, better systems, clearer accountability, practical AI adoption, and scalable processes that help our teams perform at a higher level.

The People function is central to that work.

Big Viking Games is hiring a Senior Manager, People & Culture to build our People function from the ground up.

This is the person who will own People and Culture end to end: the frameworks, systems, manager capability, employee lifecycle, and day-to-day HR operations that help the company run well, treat people fairly, and scale.

This is a genuine greenfield build. You will design and roll out the core People infrastructure, including the employee handbook, HR policies, performance framework, career paths, job architecture, compensation processes, manager training, HR systems, and the operating rhythms behind them.

You will do this with executive backing, direct access to leadership, and the room to build it properly.

Reporting to the COO, you will be the senior People voice in the business. You will partner with leaders and managers to bring structure, consistency, fairness, and evidence-based decision-making into how we hire, onboard, manage, develop, reward, and retain people.

This role is not about doing managers’ jobs for them. HR builds the system, equips managers, coaches them, and supports the organization in living up to it. Managers remain accountable for managing their teams. Your job is to make them better at it.

The right person is people-first, systems-minded, practical, technically comfortable, and curious about how AI and automation can help a lean People function operate with more speed, consistency, and clarity.

• Design and roll out the core People infrastructure, including the employee handbook, HR policies, performance-management framework, career and competency frameworks, and job architecture.
• Stand up a performance system with clear manager scorecards, calibrated ratings, and consistent standards so raises, promotions, recognition, and performance decisions are transparent and grounded in evidence.
• Build succession planning and a documented one-on-one and check-in rhythm across the organization.
• Own the full employee lifecycle, including recruiting support, onboarding, probation, role changes, performance cycles, compensation reviews, leaves, accommodations, and offboarding.
• Create clear templates, workflows, playbooks, and documentation that help managers and employees understand how things work.
• Improve consistency across teams without adding unnecessary bureaucracy.

• Build the manager operating system: training, coaching, tools, templates, and rhythms that help managers become stronger leaders.
• Bring clarity to roles, responsibilities, ownership, and decision-making across the management layer.
• Coach managers and leaders through difficult people situations, performance conversations, employee relations issues, and organizational change.
• Support managers in applying People frameworks consistently, fairly, and with good judgment.
• Partner with leadership to keep the performance bar high and applied fairly.
• Build practical routines for one-on-ones, check-ins, goal setting, feedback, documentation, recognition, and follow-through.
• Help create a culture where feedback is direct, timely, respectful, and useful.

• Own full-cycle recruitment where needed, including role definition, sourcing, screening,…