Sr. HR Generalist

 Job Title: Senior HR Generalist

Location: Chicago

Reporting to: Director of HR

Base Salary: $95,000-$105,000            

About Middle River Power

Middle River Power is a private equity-sponsored platform specializing in the investment and asset management of U.S. power generation facilities. With over 8GW of natural gas, coal, battery storage, and solar facilities across multiple states, the company focuses on safe, reliable, and efficient power plant operations. Middle River Power’s executive team collectively brings over 120 years of expertise in energy management and power generation, collaborating closely with plant personnel and industry professionals. The company applies a data-driven approach to investment and operational decisions, considering key factors such as regulatory changes and resource planning. Learn more at middleriverpower.com.

We believe that with experienced leadership, capable young talent, and strong partnerships we can collaborate to deliver outsized, innovative solutions in the energy sector. This framework ensures every hire strengthens our culture of curiosity, collaboration, and commitment while maintaining the speed and flexibility our business demands.

The Behaviors We Hire For

Our business thrives off a set of behaviors that allow our team-based culture to reach high standards and build off one another’s strengths. MRP is a PE-backed environment that requires moving at pace, calculated risk-taking and creative problem-solving. The people we hire must excel not only in their technical domain but also embody the behaviors that make us successful.

·         Love What You Do - Genuine curiosity for the energy sector and our business

·         Collaborate to Win - Works across teams; believes partnership delivers results

·         Comfort with Ambiguity - Adapts to growth and change; solves problems resourcefully

·         Innovation Over Status Quo - Brings fresh thinking, challenge assumptions

·         Confident & Honest- Owns their contribution; transparent about what they don't know

·         Progressive Problem Solver - Guides problems to solutions; works hard to get it done

·         Here for the Long Term- Committed to building a career and business with others

Position Summary

Middle River Power is looking for a Senior HR Generalist to help accelerate the growth of a newer HR department and support a growing business. The ideal candidate is an experienced people operator with 5+ years of broad HR experience and a genuine specialty in people operations. They are comfortable working autonomously, managing multiple workstreams, and engaging credibly with employees, managers, and senior leaders as a trusted HR business partner. Motivated to deliver results in a demanding fast-paced environment to help enable others success. Most importantly, this candidate is comfortable and conditioned to working in a ground up environment having the chance to shape and build people systems and processes of a scaling organization.

Key Responsibilities

Recruiting & Talent Acquisition

·         Own the end-to-end recruiting process for all MRP roles—sourcing, screening, coordinating, and supporting hiring decisions across corporate and filed operation roles.

·         Work within MRP's existing recruiting framework and tools; identify opportunities to evolve processes as the organization scales.

·         Partner with operations leaders to ensure recruiting best practices are applied consistently, and coach hiring managers through selection and best practices.

·         Draft and refine job descriptions that accurately reflect role requirements and MRP's employer offering.

·         Manage requisition volume across a variety of workforce types, maintaining quality and speed in a high-growth environment.

·         Develop streamline and simple hiring training and best practices for new hiring managers.

Onboarding & Early Career Experience

·         Own the onboarding process for all new hires from offer acceptance through early tenure, ensuring new employees are set up for success from day one.

·         Design and continuously improve onboarding workflows in partnership with site leaders and the Director of HR.

·         Develop early career touchpoints—30/60/90-day check-ins, structured ramp plans—to drive retention and engagement in critical operations roles.

·         Maintain monthly metrics dashboard of all talent acquisition KPIs.

·         Performance Management Execution

·         Own the operational execution of MRP's performance management processes, including cycle management, calibration coordination, and leader enablement.

·         Ensure performance processes are completed on time, with quality, and in alignment with the framework set by the Director of HR.

·         Support managers in delivering effective performance conversations and documentation.

·         Track and report on cycle completion and identify areas for process improvement.

·         Support in the evolution of our organization’s talent development strategies and supporting a culture of high performance

HR Operations

·         Serve as a day-to-day HR business partner for operations employees and managers—approachable, responsive, and solutions-oriented

·         Build trusted relationships at the manager and director level; communicate credibly and professionally with senior stakeholders

·         Trusted resource for employee relations issues, working quickly and diligently to resolve wide variety of ER cases with a diverse workforce in different locations

·         Owns and manages compliance training responsibilities and implementation

·         Owns the annual HR operations and compliance calendar, keeping the department and business on track

·         Regularly audits and amends company policies to fit the business needs and remains up to date with rapidly changing employment laws across all local municipalities

·         Has experience in payroll administration and compensation cycles

·         Familiar with benefits of administration and required reporting  

·         Works with the companies PEO to complete annual reporting tasks

Project Management & Process Ownership

·         Take ideas from concept to completion—managing HR projects and initiatives with structure, follow-through, and accountability.

·         Maintain process documentation, track progress against milestones, and communicate status to stakeholders proactively.

·         Bring a continuous improvement mindset to all people operations processes.

·         Project manages tech implementations or enablement’s as they arise for the department

·         Leads with an AI first mindset when it comes to simple administrative tasks and builds agents to streamline repetitive tasks and operations

Qualifications

·         5+ years of progressive HR experience in a generalist or people operations capacity.

·         Demonstrated expertise in recruiting, sourcing, assessment, process management—across a variety of roles and workforce types.

·         Track record of owning and executing HR processes end-to-end with minimal oversight.

·         Experience onboarding employees at scale; ability to design and improve structured onboarding workflows.

·         Strong project management skills—organized, structured, and accountable to timelines and deliverables.

·         Ability to facilitate training sessions, workshops, or manager capability programs.

·         Experience working in a business partner capacity at the manager and director level.

·         Proficient with HRIS platforms and applicant tracking systems; able to work within established recruiting tools and frameworks.

·         Batchlor’s degree

Preferred

·         Experience in an industrial, energy, utilities, or field-based workforce environment.

·         Background supporting operations, plant, or field workforce recruiting at volume.

·         Familiarity with PE-backed or high-growth company environments where speed and adaptability matter.

·         Experience with performance management cycle administration in a mid-size organization.

·         Worked with a national workforce, with functional experience in Illinois, California and Washington employment landscape

·         Undergraduate degree in HR or SHRM-CP/SCP or PHR/SPHR certification

Overview of our Hiring Process

We take a progressive approach to our interview process. Which means that we don’t keep the application window open long and get you right into panel conversations with those you will be working with day-to-day. Final round interviews are usually held onsite and include members of our leadership team. In some situations, we will ask candidates to complete a project or build a presentation when it is relevant to the job. Our commitment is to be timely and value your time while you are in conversations with MRP.

Work Location:

To foster a collaborative culture, we aim to place roles within one of our office locations. In some cases, we may create remote roles when it makes sense for business. Frequency and location of travel for team meetings and job duties will vary by role. MRP is an in-office 4 days a week organization.

Compensation

MRP builds its compensation packages to reward and recognize high-performing talent. Base salary ranges are designed to be competitive by market and take into consideration individual experience, technical skills and long-term career growth. Each employee is also eligible for an annual discretionary bonus based on their level and company annual performance metrics.

Benefits and Perks

MRP offers a holistic and comprehensive benefits package for all employees that consists of the following:

·         Medical, vision, dental for employees and families are 90% employer funded

·         FSA and HSA Plans with company contributions to the HAS

·         15 days of PTO plus Holidays and two floating holidays

·         Employee EAP and wellness services

·         Parental Leave

·         401k with a company match up to 4%