Senior HR Business Partner

About the role

This is a true business partner role. Most of your time is strategic: coaching managers, partnering with leadership on talent decisions, and shaping how Axial grows its workforce.

Responsibilities

• Manager Coaching & Performance. Design and run performance review cycles, leveling, calibrations, and development frameworks. Coach managers through feedback, performance issues, and team-building.
• Employee Relations. Investigate, advise on, and resolve sensitive ER matters with sound judgment, calm escalation instincts, and a clear sense of risk.
• Talent Strategy & Hiring Partnership. Partner with leadership and hiring managers on workforce planning, role definition, leveling, comp calibration, and interview design. Shaping how and who we hire for our most consequential roles.
• Compensation & Total Rewards Strategy. Own salary bands, leveling architecture, and the annual comp cycle. Run market benchmarking, advise on offers, and partner with the CEO and VP of Finance on equity, bonus, and total rewards philosophy.
• Org Design & Workforce Planning. Partner with leadership on team structure, span of control, succession, and growth planning. Translate business strategy into people strategy.
• Engagement & Retention. Own engagement strategy. Run surveys and stay interviews, analyze data, and lead action planning with managers.
• Compliance & Risk. Own employment compliance across our global footprint. Partner with our PEO and external counsel on harder questions.
• People Analytics. Develop insights that bring rigor to people decisions — headcount, retention, performance distribution, comp equity, and hiring funnel health.
• Learning & Development. Design Axial's L&D framework — what we invest in and how we develop managers as we scale.
• Operational Oversight. Direct our HR Coordinator (part-time contractor), who runs the operational backbone. You'll set priorities and ensure clean execution — the goal is to free you from operational work, not pull you into it.
• Strategic People Initiatives. Lead projects that move the function forward — manager onboarding, leadership development, and culture programs.

Qualifications

• 5–9+ years of progressive HR experience, including 3+ years as a true business partner to senior leaders
• Track record as the People voice in exec conversations — you've coached VPs, pushed back on founders, and held your own in hard rooms
• Strong ER instincts — handled complex matters with judgment, discretion, and calm escalation
• Experience scaling People functions in growth-stage companies
• Comp/leveling experience across functions, including building or refining salary bands
• Experience managing or directing junior team members or contractors
• Strong People analytics mindset — you reach for data before opinion
• Tech-savvy with HRIS, ATS, Google Suite, and Notion. Active AI user who leverages LLMs to accelerate your work