Senior People Business Partner

About the role

We're looking for a Senior People Business Partner to be the people strategist for some of the most technically demanding teams in physical AI. You'll partner directly with Senior Leadership at a company where decisions are made in days, priorities shift, and orgs change. You'll lead through influence, building trust with leaders and bringing in the right partners to get to the best answer.

We expect our PBPs to lead with high agency. You'll own People strategy for your client groups the way a Chief People Officer would own a company’s people strategy: setting the agenda, making the calls, and driving outcomes.

Client groups: This role is part of a shared hiring pathway for PBPs. Rather than hiring for a single client group, we evaluate candidates holistically first, then identify the best fit across the company as you advance, aligning your skills and interests with where the business needs you most.

At Applied Intuition, you will:

• Be the business and people strategist for your leaders. Start with where the business is going and bring leaders a clear point of view, with the tradeoffs of each option laid out. Translate business goals into talent decisions: org design, workforce planning, leveling, and succession. Use data to spot attrition risk, capability gaps, and structural problems before the business feels them, and treat your leaders as customers whose success is your measure.

• Lead organizations through change. Own reorganizations, leadership transitions, and shifting priorities from design through landing: the plan, the narrative, the sequencing, and the follow-through with managers and teams. Keep headcount and resources disciplined along the way.

• Increase talent density. Lead calibration, promotion, and talent review for your groups. Identify and develop top talent, coach managers to raise the bar on their teams, and handle performance and employee relations issues with judgment, discretion, and dignity. Move fast and move safe.

• Shape People programs through the business lens. Heavily influence and lead the development of company-wide programs such as the compensation cycle, performance and talent processes, and succession planning, making sure they work for the businesses they serve. Be scrappy when the moment calls for it: if a program doesn't exist yet or the timeline is short, build a working version yourself and refine it as you go.

• Raise the bar on the PBP team. Take on the most complex client groups, help shape how the team operates, and raise the bar for the PBPs around you.

We are looking for someone who has:

• 8+ years of HR business partner experience, with at least 3 years partnering directly with C-suite or SVP-level leaders, preferably in a high-tech environment.

• Bachelor’s or advanced degree in Human Resources, Organizational Psychology, or a related field

• Strong business acumen. You understand how the business makes money, where the constraints are, and how talent decisions affect outcomes, and you can speak that language with executives.

• Strong judgment. You know when to move fast, when to slow down, and when to bring in partners, and leaders trust your read on sensitive, ambiguous situations.

• High agency and ownership. You've run a client group or a major initiative with minimal direction, made decisions with incomplete information, and are energized by owning the outcome end to end.

• A record of leading change, not just supporting it: org design, workforce planning, and reorganizations through rapid growth or shifting priorities, with outcomes you can point to.

• A track record of influencing executive decisions with data and a clear point of view, not just supporting them.

• Fluency with data. You pull your own analysis, find the signal in headcount, attrition, and performance data, and turn it into a recommendation a leader can act on.

• Experience with talent processes (calibration, compensation, promotion) and complex employee relations, including investigations, performance management, and terminations.

• Clear, concise, direct communication, and the discipline to prioritize ruthlessly and follow through on every commitment.

Nice to have:

• Experience supporting engineering, research, or other highly technical organizations.

• Experience partnering with founders or scaling through an IPO.

• Experience supporting international teams, particularly in Germany, Japan, Middle East or Australia.