Job Title: Lead Specialist, HRIS & People operations

Department: Workday

About Us:

Sentient an Ascend Company is a fast-growing accounting outsourcing firm serving a diverse portfolio of clients across the United States. With a highly skilled team based in both the U.S. and India, we specialize in delivering fully customized accounting solutions tailored to meet the unique needs of CPA firms.

Leveraging the power of AI, process automation, and a scalable suite of services, Sentient empowers CPA firms to enhance efficiency, reduce costs, and focus on strategic growth. Our commitment to quality and innovation ensures that our clients receive accurate, timely, and value-driven support.

We are proud to be an Ascend Partner Firm, one of the top CPA firms in the U.S., enabling us to deliver exceptional service and results to clients nationwide.

For more Info: Sentient an Ascend Company & Ascend

Why This Role Exists

This seat is a senior individual contributor who leads transactional support. What we need is a master people operator and lead Workday administrator who owns the queue, carries a real transaction load, and directs the support team so that accuracy and turnaround hold without the U.S. team running the day.

Workday depth is required, but broad people operations knowledge is necessary also. The person should be as comfortable telling a Head of People what a process requires as they are configuring an approval route.

The seat directs the day-to-day work of the Sentient-based HRIS support team, with formal people management following as the function and the person prove out.

Scope of Ownership

Transactional support leadership

- Owns the Workday inbox: 24-hour response, 48-hour resolution
- Directs the Sentient-based HRIS support team: work assignment, quality standards, coaching
- Triage, workload balancing, coverage planning across peaks and integrations
- Cross-training so no process has a single point of failure

Workday transaction processing

- Job changes, compensation changes, terminations, contractor onboarding, ad-hoc reporting
- Complex and escalated transactions; converts recurring ones into documented standard work
- Repeatable, documented processes around terminations and contractor onboarding

Data excellence and audits

- Weekly audits: job profile, cost center, admin/professional classification
- Weekly former-employee password reset audits and Flexible Work Arrangement audits
- Employee data matches Ascend's current data structure exactly




- Applies the Workday data guide; flags where it is unclear or outdated for the U.S. team to resolve

Workday configuration and security

- Executes business process configuration, condition rules, and approval routing under U.S. direction
- Security groups and role assignments; access provisioning and de-provisioning
- Supports release testing and regression with HCM IT and external consultants
- Configuration documentation and change traceability

Partner firm integrations

- Data audits before and after migration
- Day-one correction support for newly integrated firms
- Onboarding status reports to Heads of People three times daily during integration

Firm support and process guidance

- First point of contact for Heads of People on how processes work and what a request requires
- Documents recurring questions into self-serve guidance

Operating rhythm

- Daily check-ins with the Sentient-based HRIS support team
- Weekly 1:1 with the U.S. lead
- Weekly People Team meeting

Explicitly Out of Scope Worth stating plainly so the seat does not drift.

- Policy interpretation and classification decisions — the U.S. People Tech team and HR Business Partner own these; this seat routes them
- Ownership of the Workday data guide — the U.S. team sets mapping standards and arbitrates exceptions
- Performance and compensation cycle ownership — remains with the U.S. team
- Employee relations casework — investigations, disciplinary decisions, and documentation of individual cases stay with Heads of People and the U.S. People Ops Team
- Leave, LOA, and accommodation administration — remains with the firms and the U.S. team

The Lead Specialist can be asked about all of these and should know enough to route them correctly. Owning them is a different conversation.

Outcomes and Measures

- Queue performance: 24-hour response and 48-hour resolution standards hold across the team, not just on average — including during integration windows and absence
- Independence: any job or compensation change arriving in the Workday inbox is handled in-region, because this person knows the Workday data guide cold
- Audit discipline: weekly audits complete on schedule without prompting,



findings reported clearly enough to be fixed at the source
- Error rate: measurable reduction in transaction rework and post-migration corrections quarter over quarter
- Integration reliability: newly joined firms come in clean, with day-one corrections cleared and status reporting on cadence
- Config hygiene: zero unplanned access or routing incidents; every release tested before production
- Team development: the support team measurably expands scope under this lead

What Good Looks Like

- The queue runs without the U.S. team watching it
- Onboarding and new firm integrations produce consistently accurate data
- Audits and reporting are consistent and systematic, not reactive
- Recurring problems come back to the U.S. team as a proposed fix, not a repeated ticket
- Problems surface from this team before a firm reports them

Decision Rights

- Owns outright: day-to-day work assignment and coverage for the support team, triage and prioritization within the queue, transaction processing decisions within the data guide, audit execution and reporting
- Owns with U.S. review: configuration and security changes, automation builds, anything touching payroll-relevant data, process changes that affect what firms experience
- Escalates: policy interpretation, classification decisions, compliance exposure, employee relations matters, anything that changes what a partner firm is committed to
- Not yet owned: formal performance management of the support team — reviews and development plans stay with the U.S. lead until the seat and the function are established

Context They Need to Absorb Early

- The Workday data guide — specifically which job profiles map to which cost center types
- Partner firm structure, and the Head of People / People Team contact map
- The HR Partner Reporting dashboard
- What we centralize (advantages, payroll, HRIS, EIN for non-C-corp entities) versus what Heads of People own at the firm level

Cultural Context Ascend has its own lingo. New hires should learn it fast:

- JDIs -"just do it" tasks
- Rocks — goals
- Accelerators — rapid cross-functional problem solving
- Renewals — meetings with the whole firm
- PeopleFirst — our operating rhythm: scorecards, designed alliances, career trail maps

What we ask of people in this seat: bring the sunshine, win together, challenge the status quo, focus on root cause rather than symptoms, make our systems simpler and cleaner, and help us move from reactive to proactive.

📌 Workday - Lead Specialist, HRIS & People Operations (Hyderabad)
🏢 SENTIENT - An Ascend
📍 Hyderabad