Senior HR Manager

Department: Human Resources | Reports To: Director of Human Resources | FLSA Status: Exempt | Employment Type: Full-Time, Regular | Location: 455 Franklin Street, San Francisco, CA 94102 (hybrid: in-office minimum 3x a week)

About the Organization

San Francisco Ballet embodies the spirit of its city: innovative, forward-thinking, and unafraid to challenge convention. Founded in 1933, the company has long understood that ballet's power lies in its ability to blend timeless tradition with modern relevance — from presenting America's first full-length productions of Nutcracker and Swan Lake to consistently pushing the boundaries of contemporary choreography. Under the artistic direction of Tamara Rojo and executive leadership of Branislav Henselmann, SF Ballet is leading boldly into a new era, where artistic vision, organizational momentum, and civic energy converge to create a genuinely rare moment of opportunity. The company is reimagining what ballet can be, and making the case that its most compelling chapter is still ahead.

About the Role

The Senior HR Manager is a key member of San Francisco Ballet's Human Resources team and a close partner to the Director of Human Resources. This is a highly visible, hands-on role for an experienced HR professional who enjoys building relationships, solving complex people challenges, and strengthening the systems and practices that support a healthy workplace. With employee experience and relations as a core area of responsibility, the Senior HR Manager provides thoughtful guidance to employees and managers, leads investigations and performance matters, and helps address concerns early through coaching and partnership. The role also has meaningful ownership across talent acquisition, onboarding, performance management, HR systems, and learning and development, and serves as a trusted resource across the organization. San Francisco Ballet is a complex and dynamic workplace that includes artists, administrators, faculty, production professionals, and employees represented by seven bargaining units. Success in this role requires sound judgment, strong HR fundamentals, curiosity, and the ability to build trust across very different teams and perspectives. This is an opportunity to help shape how HR supports the organization during an important period of evolution — one that requires pairing strong, consistent HR practices with a relationship-driven approach to culture change and creating improvements that make the employee experience stronger over time.

Responsibilities

Employee Experience and Relations

• Build trusted, day-to-day relationships with managers and employees so small concerns surface early and get resolved through coaching before they need to become formal matters.
• Own Employee Relations caseload: investigations (harassment, discrimination, retaliation, and conduct matters), coaching and performance management.
• Escalate high-risk or sensitive matters to the Director of HR and/or counsel with a clear risk assessment.
• Track ER trends, conduct root cause analysis, and recommend proactive fixes (training, coaching, policy changes) rather than treating each case in isolation; turn casework into stronger, healthier teams over time.
• Serve as mentor and escalation point for other HR team members on ER questions, case handling, and conflict resolution.
• Partner with Director of HR on the organization's employee experience strategy, including engagement (pulse) surveys, recognition programs, and onboarding/offboarding touchpoints that shape how staff experience the employee lifecycle.
• Lead employee experience initiatives such as stay interviews, exit interview analysis, and culture check-ins to complement pulse survey data with qualitative insight.

Policy & Compliance

• Own HR policy maintenance: audit policies against current federal/California/SF law, draft and implement updates (including those arising from ER lessons learned), and monitor legislative developments that affect SFB.
• Co-Chair the Safety Committee and maintain the Injury and Illness Prevention Program (IIPP), ensuring ongoing compliance with Cal/OSHA requirements and driving timely identification, reporting, and resolution of workplace hazards.
• Support and lead the building, maintenance, and accessibility of the employee handbook.

Talent, Onboarding & Performance

• Own full-cycle recruitment and the new hire onboarding experience (first-day logistics, orientation, 30/60/90-day check-ins) for assigned departments.
• Administer the performance management cycle (PPR) and coach managers on proactive performance conversations, before issues escalate to