Open to new opportunities

People Operations
that ships software.

I'm a People Ops & People Analytics leader who doesn't wait for engineering. I design, build, and ship the internal tools my teams need — full-stack apps, live dashboards, and automation that turn manual ops into systems that scale.

10+
years driving operations
1 IPO
+ 3 acquisitions navigated
0→1
production tools, end to end
50
states of compliance built
01 — About

Operator by title, builder by instinct.

I lead People Operations and People Analytics at a fast-scaling consumer wellness company, where I'm responsible for the systems that keep a growing, multi-state team running — onboarding and offboarding, payroll, compliance, headcount analytics, and the day-to-day infrastructure of the people function.

What sets my work apart is that I build the tooling myself. When a process is manual, brittle, or invisible, I prototype the fix and ship it — from full-stack web apps with real authentication and databases, to live dashboards that pull from our actual systems, to automation that eliminates repetitive work.

I'm fluent across the stack a modern operator needs: SQL and data analysis, full-stack development (Next.js, React, Postgres), product thinking, and AI-assisted engineering. I care about clean systems, secure handling of sensitive people data, and tools that other people actually want to use.

I've done this across the full company spectrum — from sub-50-person, venture-backed startups (Fathom Radiant, Mosey) to a public company (Datto, through its NYSE IPO and $6.2B acquisition) and a hypergrowth brand now inside Unilever. So I'm equally at home moving fast on a scrappy startup team and operating with the structure and rigor a large corporation demands.

At a glance

FocusPeople Ops · Analytics · HR Tech
BuildsInternal tools & dashboards
StackNext.js · React · Postgres
DataSQL · BigQuery · viz
Ships withCloud Run · GCS · GitHub
RangeSeed startups → Unilever
EdgeOps fluency + engineering
02 — Selected work

Things I've built.

A sample of internal products I designed and shipped — each one solving a real operational problem for a real team. Details generalized to protect company data.

🗓️
Full-stack app

Company Offsite Planning Platform

A production web app — shipped across ~50 iterations — that runs a 120-person company offsite end to end: RSVPs, dietary & swag, travel, budgets, vendor outreach, an agenda builder and run-of-show, plus auto-grouping that clusters attendees into airport shuttles by flight-arrival windows. Role-based access gives the planning team a full admin suite and every employee a personalized participant portal.

Integrated the Google Maps Platform (Maps JavaScript + Places APIs) for hotel/airport autocomplete and an interactive, color-coded POI map; sends on-brand HTML emails with inline (CID) hero images; and persists to Google Cloud Storage with optimistic-concurrency (compare-and-swap) writes. Deployed on Cloud Run behind Identity-Aware Proxy, with a server-side Places cache + photo proxy to protect the API key.
Next.jsCloud RunGoogle Cloud StorageMaps / Places APIIdentity-Aware ProxyHTML email (CID)Notion API
📊
Live workspace

Unified People Ops Workspace

A live operator workspace that pulls in real time from six business systems — Slack, email, calendar, Asana, Gusto, and Ramp — into one Inbox / Queue / Team view. It evolved from my own daily dashboard into a shareable, zero-data team app shell any teammate can personalize to their role and connectors, with privacy designed so each viewer only ever sees their own data.

Probed every API for its real response shape, then shipped a self-contained, multi-user tool with strict per-user data access.
MCP integrationsJavaScriptData vizPrivacy-first
💻
React tool

IT Asset Management System

An asset-tracking application for managing company hardware across the org — assignments, lifecycle, and inventory. Diagnosed and fixed a performance bottleneck by pre-compiling ~2,900 lines of JSX so the app loads instantly instead of compiling in the browser.

Cut load time from seconds-of-blank-screen to under one second through a build-time compilation strategy.
ReactJSXPerformanceTailwind
📈
Analytics

People Function Scorecard

A metrics scorecard for the people function — headcount, attrition, span of control, and operational health — turning raw HR and payroll data into a leadership-ready view of how the org is performing and where the risks are.

Translated messy operational data into a clear, recurring signal leadership could act on.
SQLBigQueryData modelingReporting
⚙️
Automation

HR Operations Automation

A body of automation across the employee lifecycle: onboarding and offboarding workflows, offer-letter and document generation, prorated payroll and accrual calculations, time-off policy administration, and spend analysis on contractor costs by month.

Replaced hours of manual, error-prone spreadsheet work with repeatable, auditable processes.
Payroll systemsSpreadsheetsProcess designCompliance
03 — Experience

A decade of scaling operations.

I've spent 10+ years as the operational backbone of high-growth companies — through a NYSE IPO, multiple billion-dollar acquisitions, and hypergrowth from startup to scale.

Grüns2025 — Present
People Operations · Remote
Celebrity-backed daily-nutrition brand · $500M valuation · $300M+ revenue by year two, shipping 10M+ gummies a day.
Acquired by Unilever · 2026Hypergrowth
  • Own People Operations & analytics for a fast-scaling, multi-state team through an acquisition by Unilever.
  • Run multi-state payroll, benefits, and leave administration end to end on Gusto — bi-weekly multi-state payroll, medical/dental/vision enrollment and qualifying-life-event changes, the Carrot family-forming benefit, and full leave-of-absence management via our partner Sparrow, including coordinating state PFML/PFL top-ups so employees receive their full pay.
  • Designed and shipped the internal software stack myself — an offsite-planning platform, live people-ops dashboards, an IT asset system, lifecycle automation, and people-function scorecards that turn raw HR and payroll data into leadership-ready signal.
  • Architect and deploy these tools straight to production on Google Cloud (Cloud Run, BigQuery) — no engineering team required — and lead AI-native enablement across the company.
Mosey, Inc.June 2024 — 2025
Operations Manager · Remote (Denver, CO)
Venture-backed multi-state compliance platform · $18M Series A (Canaan, Gusto, SemperVirens).
Acquired by GustoSeries A SaaS50-state compliance
  • Architected and scaled tax-registration workflows across all 50 states (withholding, unemployment, PFML, workers' comp).
  • Managed a vendor-agent network delivering compliant, on-time execution of client payroll-tax requests.
  • Launched a premium "managed account" model, improving ACV, client retention, and time-to-close.
Fathom RadiantJuly 2022 — May 2024
Operations Manager · Boulder, CO
Deep-tech AI hardware — optical compute for brain-scale neural networks · backed by Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund & Jeff Bezos.
Frontier deep-tech0→1 ops
  • Led cross-functional oversight across HR, Finance, IT, and Facilities; introduced repeatable, cross-departmental SOPs.
  • Owned benefits design and rollout — ICHRA, FSAs, and equity distribution — with external partners.
  • Managed corporate compliance, contracts, and IP filings, interfacing with legal for audit readiness.
Datto, Inc.Sept 2017 — Mar 2022
Operations Manager · Norwalk, CT
Cloud / MSP software leader · 1,700+ employees · IPO on the NYSE in 2020 ($594M raised, $4B valuation).
NYSE IPO · 2020Acquired by Kaseya · $6.2B
  • Directed IT asset lifecycle and compliance tracking through Datto's IPO and $6.2B acquisition, aligning to SOC and SOX protocols.
  • Built scalable internal-operations frameworks and ran cross-team partner meetings to close service gaps.
  • Designed the annual hardware budget and tech-spend program, negotiating vendor pricing and recycling buy-back programs to fund future costs.
  • Owned end-to-end onboarding and offboarding — IT, access management, space, and equipment.
04 — Capabilities

What I bring to a team.

A rare combination: someone who understands the operational problem deeply and can build the technical solution.

👥

People Operations

  • Onboarding & offboarding
  • Multi-state payroll & comp ops
  • Benefits admin — Medical, Dental, STD, Life, 401(k)
  • Leave & family benefits (Sparrow, Carrot)
  • Multi-state compliance
  • HRIS administration (Gusto, Rippling)
📐

Data & Analytics

  • SQL & BigQuery
  • People & operational metrics
  • Dashboards & data viz
  • Reporting & scorecards
  • Data modeling
🛠️

Engineering

  • Next.js, React & TypeScript
  • Google Cloud (Cloud Run, GCS, BigQuery)
  • 3rd-party APIs (Google Maps/Places, Notion)
  • Auth, RBAC & SSO (Identity-Aware Proxy, Clerk)
  • CI/CD, GitHub & AI-assisted development
RipplingGustoADPCartaGuidelineNetSuiteSAPRampBill.comJiraNotionMosey
05 — On GitHub

I build in the open.

Everything you've seen here I designed and shipped myself. Most of my production work lives in private company repos, but here's the stack I build with and where it ships.

Languages

TypeScriptJavaScriptPythonSQLHTML / CSS

Frameworks

Next.jsReactNode.jsTailwind

Cloud & deploy

Google Cloud RunCloud StorageBigQueryVercelNetlify

APIs & integrations

Google Maps / PlacesNotion APISlackGustoRampMCP connectors
github.com/michaelrak-spec

Let's build something.

Based in the Denver metro and open to remote roles. If you're looking for an operator who can both run the function and ship the tools that make it scale, I'd love to talk.