Senior People Business Partner

Job description

ABOUT BASETEN Baseten powers mission-critical inference for the world's most dynamic AI companies, like Cursor, Notion, OpenEvidence, Abridge, Clay, Gamma and Writer. By uniting applied AI research, flexible infrastructure, and seamless developer tooling, we enable companies operating at the frontier of AI to bring cutting-edge models into production. We're growing quickly and recently raised our $1.5B Series F https://www.baseten.co/blog/announcing-our-series-f/, led by Altimeter Capital, Conviction Partners, and Spark Capital. Join us and help build the platform engineers turn to to ship AI products. THE ROLE We’re hiring a People Business Partner to support our team during a critical phase of growth. This is a highly strategic, high-impact role for someone who has partnered closely with leadership teams and helped organizations scale with intention. You will be deeply embedded with managers, bringing clarity and rigor to how teams are structured, how leaders operate, and how talent is developed across the organization. You’ll help shape team effectiveness, identify critical talent gaps, drive talent and performance strategies that enable high-performing teams, and build the people practices and change management approaches that allow us to scale with both speed and discipline. This role requires strong business judgment and the ability to operate with deep context. You’ll partner closely with leaders to navigate complex organizational decisions, anticipate challenges before they surface, and bring a clear point of view on what great looks like at every level of the organization. RESPONSIBILITIES Strategic partnership to leadership - Serve as the trusted people partner to leadership, maintaining deep business context and translating it into people priorities by proactively surfacing systemic issues, risks, and opportunities before they become urgent. - Bring data-driven insights to advise management on org design, succession planning, performance, retention, and engagement. - Build management capacity across the org, equipping leaders with the skills and frameworks to hire well, set clear expectations, give direct feedback, and develop their teams. - Partner with leadership, Talent, and Finance on headcount planning and tracking. Support annual planning and ongoing adjustments to hiring plans as business priorities and team needs evolve. - Support change management efforts across teams, ensuring leaders and cross functional teams can successfully navigate growth, evolving strategy and changing org structure. Performance and talent management - Drive a high-performance culture, supporting clear expectation setting, rapid ramping, ongoing accountability, regular performance reviews, and rigorous performance management. - Navigate high-stakes people matters (investigations, performance exits, organizational change), balancing compliance and risk management with compassion and a human approach. - Advise on role architecture, career pathing, and promotion readiness within the org, proactively identifying top talent and flight risks to inform retention and development strategies. - Collaborate with Compensation on salary benchmarking, equity strategy, and offer approvals to keep hiring competitive and internally equitable. - Partner closely with People Operations on employee lifecycle execution. Develop best practices and strong documentation practices for role changes, promotions, leaves, and terminations. - Collaborate with Workplace Experience to ensure teams have what they need across our offices, from team onsites and offsites to day-to-day environment asks. REQUIREMENTS - 6+ years of progressive People Business partner experience, partnering with all levels of management, from VP+ leaders to frontline and first-time managers, across a range of functions. - Experience supporting 400+ employee organizations through rapid growth, with deep expertise in org design, performance management, talent strategy, and leadership development. - Strong business acumen, with the ability to understand priorities and trade-offs and quickly build credibility and deep context with the functions you support. - Proven ability to navigate complex, high-stakes people decisions with speed and sound judgment, grounded in risk awareness. - Highly analytical and first-principles thinker who uses data to diagnose root causes and builds simple, scalable processes over heavyweight systems. - Thrives in high-growth environments defined by ownership, pace, and ambiguity. High-ownership mindset with a bias toward execution and building repeatable systems. - Extremely clear written and verbal communication skills, balancing nuance with directness to build trust and align stakeholders. - Able to work in-person 3+ days per week in San Francisco. BENEFITS - Competitive compensation, including meaningful equity. - 100% coverage of medical, dental, and vision insurance for employee and dependents - Flexible PTO policy including company wide Winter Break (our offices are closed from Christmas Eve to New Year's Day!) - Paid parental leave - Fertility and family-building stipend through Carrot - Company-facilitated 401(k) - Exposure to a variety of ML startups, offering unparalleled learning and networking opportunities. Apply now to embark on a rewarding journey in shaping the future of AI! If you are a motivated individual with a passion for machine learning and a desire to be part of a collaborative and forward-thinking team, we would love to hear from you. At Baseten, we are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable law (by example, the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, where applicable).