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Protege is building a platform to solve AI's biggest unmet need: secure, efficient, and privacy-centric access to training data. The company is backed by world-class investors and already powers partnerships with ambitious AI teams. You will join a lean, fast-moving, high-trust team obsessed with velocity and impact.
As Senior HR Business Partner, you will be a strategic, hands-on builder who partners closely with leadership to establish the people foundation for Protege's next growth phase. You will move fluidly between advising executives on organizational and talent decisions, coaching managers through complex conversations, and personally driving programs that improve employee experience.
Key responsibilities include:
- Partner with leaders across Engineering, GTM, and Operations to translate business priorities into people plans, organization design, workforce planning, and team-health actions.
- Coach managers to set clear expectations, deliver candid feedback, recognize performance, address underperformance, and build high-performing teams.
- Own and continuously improve the employee lifecycle: onboarding, performance management, promotions, development, and offboarding.
- Lead core People programs including performance reviews, calibration, engagement mechanisms, manager enablement, and employee communications.
- Help define and reinforce the culture needed to win: high ownership, urgency, rigorous execution, kindness, and candor.
- Partner with the executive team and hiring managers on compensation, leveling, and promotion decisions to ensure frameworks are competitive, clear, and consistently applied.
- Serve as a trusted, confidential resource for employees and managers; navigate employee relations, conflict, and sensitive situations with discretion and sound judgment.
- Build scalable People Operations infrastructure including policies, HRIS practices, compliance documentation, and manager resources.
- Partner with Talent to strengthen hiring, interviewing, and candidate experience.
- Ensure people practices remain compliant as the company grows across jurisdictions.
Success milestones: By Day 1, begin understanding and strengthening cultural behaviors and performance expectations. By Day 30, own core People programs and deliver a clear plan for improving culture and manager effectiveness. By Day 60, establish performance-management approaches and build scalable manager tools. By Day 90, lead a company-wide performance cycle and launch culture initiatives with measurable impact.
REQUIREMENTS:
- Significant HRBP or People leadership experience in a high-growth, high-accountability startup environment, ideally in technology, AI, data, or another fast-moving, complex business.
- Demonstrated record of building and scaling people programs including performance management, manager enablement, employee engagement, compensation, leveling, and employee lifecycle operations.
- Strong business judgment and ability to connect people work directly to company priorities, team effectiveness, and business outcomes.
- Comfort operating independently in ambiguous environments; ability to create structure quickly without overengineering.
- Proven ability to earn credibility with executives, managers, and individual contributors.
- Direct, thoughtful communication style with confidence to challenge leaders, provide difficult feedback, and navigate conflict with care.
- Strong knowledge of employment law and compliance fundamentals, with sound judgment about when to involve outside counsel.
- Willingness to operate at every level: advising on team design and resolving employee issues in the same day.
- High bar for discretion, follow-through, operational excellence, and impact.
