Director, HRBP - Engineering

About the role

The Director, HR Business Partner will serve as the strategic people partner to the R&D organization, playing a critical role in the transformation of Chainalysis from a product-based company to an intelligence platform AI-native company. The role focuses on building the organizational architecture for what comes next, evolving the R&D culture to support the work of the future.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a strategic partner to the Head of R&D and R&D's senior leadership, building and embedding the people strategy to accelerate Chainalysis's transformation to an intelligence company.
• Lead organizational design and change management across R&D as teams evolve to support new operating models.
• Understand the distinct workflows and operating rhythms of platform engineering, data science, research, product, design, and support, and partner with leadership to design structures that optimize for velocity, ownership, autonomy, and cross-functional collaboration.
• Drive the people side of AI transformation; help leaders understand how AI-augmented productivity is reshaping engineering roles, team sizes, and career trajectories.
• Evolve technical career frameworks and leveling to reflect the shift toward AI-native development and increased individual ownership.
• Own workforce planning and talent strategy for R&D, including succession planning, critical-role identification, and retention strategies for deeply specialized technical talent in a competitive market (blockchain, cryptography, data science, security), across our core technology hubs (NYC, Aarhus, and Tel Aviv).
• Partner with R&D leadership and Finance to ensure organizational design and headcount decisions balance growth investment with operational efficiency and cost discipline.
• Coach and challenge senior technical leaders on organizational health, performance management, team effectiveness, and employee relations, bringing both data and empathy to difficult conversations.
• Hold leaders accountable to Chainalysis's cultural standards as the organization scales.
• Help redefine R&D's operating rhythm and cultural standards; partner with the Head of R&D to reinforce an execution-oriented culture built on pride in craft, operational rigor, urgency, and transparency.
• Support the people dimensions of OKR-driven planning, quarterly business reviews, and structured accountability across a global, hybrid organization.
• Use data to see around corners; leverage people analytics to diagnose organizational health, identify attrition risks, and surface trends before they become systemic.
• Bring the same analytical rigor to people decisions that R&D brings to technical ones.

Requirements

We are looking for candidates with 10+ years of progressive HR/People experience, with at least 5 years as a strategic HRBP supporting engineering, R&D, or other deeply technical global organizations at high-growth technology companies with strong engineering cultures. Experience scaling an R&D organization through a period of rapid growth is essential, as is a deep understanding of how technical organizations operate and how AI is reshaping work.