Senior People Business Partner

Job description

About Us At Antares, our long-term mission is to make clean energy abundant from Earth to the Asteroid Belt. We’re fueled by the belief that advanced nuclear energy can strengthen our military, solve the climate crisis, elevate global living standards, and expand humanity's presence in outer space. To achieve our mission, we’re building mass-producible, inherently safe, deployable microreactors that can be used terrestrially, underwater, and in space. The Antares team hails from SpaceX, the White House, the Pentagon, the Department of Energy, MIT, Rigetti Computing, General Atomics, Relativity Space, Ursa Major, and National Laboratories like Idaho, Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, and Savannah River. Antares has raised over $600M in venture capital from top-tier investors and has hundreds of million-dollars on contract with the military services, NASA, and the Department of Energy. About the Team The People team at Antares is building the foundation for how we attract, develop, and support exceptional talent as the company continues to grow. We partner closely with leaders across Engineering, Operations, and Corporate functions to create scalable people programs, foster an inclusive and high-performing culture, and ensure employees have the resources they need to do their best work. As a Senior People Team Business Partner at Antares, you'll be a trusted advisor to leaders and employees, helping build an exceptional employee experience while enabling our teams to do their best work. You'll partner with our client groups to support day-to-day people operations, employee relations, organizational effectiveness, talent planning, and change management, while collaborating closely with Recruiting, People Operations, Legal, Finance, and IT. Importantly, you will be a steward of our high-performance culture, implementing inspiring and scalable initiatives to ensure that our employees strive for excellence in everything they do. Startups are hard - it is your job to support our people in embracing the challenge with positivity, teamwork, and humility. This is a high-impact role for someone who thrives in a fast-paced, high-performance environment and is energized by the opportunity to build from an early stage at a company with a global vision. Roles and Responsibilities: - Champion a high-performing, people-first culture that reflects Antares' values and supports employee engagement and business success. - Develop and implement HR policies, compliance practices, and operational processes that are practical and scalable. - Serve as the primary resource for employees and managers on HR policies, employee relations issues, and workplace matters, handling investigations and resolutions with sound judgment and discretion. - Partner with leaders to understand team dynamics, organizational health, and business priorities, providing strategic guidance on talent, performance, organizational design, and change management. - Partner with people leaders to build their coaching and feedback capabilities through leadership development programs, manager training, and ongoing 1:1 support. - Lead and support employee lifecycle processes, including internal mobility, promotions, offboarding, leaves of absence, accommodations, and other People Operations processes while ensuring compliance with federal, state, and local employment laws. - Partner with Finance and business leaders on headcount planning, organizational changes, workforce planning, and job architecture to support business growth and operational efficiency. - Leverage people analytics and workforce metrics—including hiring, retention, engagement, performance, and organizational trends—to identify opportunities and recommend data-informed solutions. - Contribute to cross-functional People initiatives and special projects that support the continued growth and evolution of Antares. Basic Qualifications: - Bachelor’s degree. - 5+ years of progressive HR or People Operations experience in a high-growth, high-performance environment. - Strong knowledge of employment laws and HR best practices across multiple jurisdictions, especially in California Preferred Skills & Experience: - Experience as the first or early HR hire at a startup or scaling company. - Experience supporting both exempt and non-exempt employee populations. - Background supporting engineering, R&D, or manufacturing teams. - Experience with Rippling HRIS strongly preferred. - Knowledge of employment laws and HR best practices across other states, including WA, ID, SC, and others - Familiarity with compensation planning, organizational design, and workforce planning. - Demonstrated ability to build trusted relationships and influence leaders at all levels through thoughtful coaching and consultative partnership. - Experience managing sensitive employee relations matters with sound judgment, discretion, and a balanced, business-minded approach. - Excellent verbal and written communications skills. Ability to be direct, clear, and confident in interpersonal matters. - Experience rolling out performance review cycles. Additional Requirements: - Ability to work long hours and weekends as necessary to support critical milestones - This role requires being on-site 5 days per week Location - We are located in Torrance, CA in a 322,000 square foot, brand new facility featuring large open spaces for team collaboration, R&D, and production, as well as easy access to the 405, 105, and 110 freeways. Our facility is in the heart of Los Angeles' vibrant emerging tech ecosystem alongside many other high growth startups and enterprises. Culture At Antares, we like to specifically tie each role to our founding document’s set of values–here are the top five cultural values we think you should believe at your core to be successful: - Think in Systems - Energy and Defense are complex ecosystems with numerous stakeholders with competing priorities, conflicting policies, perverse incentives, and emergent and path-dependent properties. First principles thinking alone is insufficient. Think probabilistically and then take action. “If you want to be certain, then you are apt to be obsolete.” Over-optimizing the components often degrades the system - Obsess over the End User - The customer and end user are often not the same. We will never build globally competitive commercial products if we lose sight of our end users and their entire interaction with the product life cycle - Be Unconstrained by Convention - Our only limits are the laws of physics. Many, even experts, will say what we are working on is impossible. They said the same about SpaceX reusing rockets. Generationally impactful companies, by definition, must accomplish the seemingly impossible. If it were easy, it would have already been done. Never shy away from a solution because it has never been tried before, and never choose to do something because that's “how it's always been done” - Go Where the Work Is - Never miss a chance to meet a customer, user, or stakeholder face to face, even if that means hopping on a plane. If you can’t make it, find a teammate who can channel your intentions and go in your place. Deep work can be done from anywhere, but we believe teams are built in person, and aim to maximize our time together - Operate in the Grey - Embrace nuance in pursuit of truth. Question every fundamental assumption Equal Opportunity Antares is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Employment decisions are based solely on merit, competence, and qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability, or any other legally protected status. ITAR REQUIREMENTS To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here https://www.pmddtc.state.gov/?id=ddtc_kb_article_page&sys_id=24d528fddbfc930044f9ff621f961987.