Sr. Director, People Partners

Avalara • UNAVAILABLE, UNAVAILABLE

5d • Remote

About The Position

As Senior Director, HR Business Partnering, you will be the primary people strategist and day-to-day partner to two C-suite executives in Technology & Customer Operations (TCO) and Strategy & Product. You will translate business vision into adaptable organization designs, effective workforce strategies, and lasting leadership capability. You will lead a global team of HR Business Partners embedded across both organizations and connect them with Avalara’s Centers of Excellence to bring people programs, talent practices, and technology together into a talent system that drives measurable business results. You will also help evolve the People & Culture Team’s operating approach through the use of AI and data. Success means strengthening talent in critical roles, raising leadership and performance standards, improving business results, and helping leaders identify the impact of your work.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in HR, business, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 15+ years of HR experience.
• 6+ years of people management experience leading a team of HRBPs.
• 5+ years as a senior HR Business Partner to engineering, technology, or product leaders.
• Track record advising C-suite and SVP leaders, with the credibility to challenge them and the judgment to know when to push.
• Experience designing organizations for technology teams, including software development, infrastructure, engineering, and cross-functional product groups, including restructurings and regional scaling.
• Experience leading large-scale change as AI and automation reshape roles, job architecture, and teams, and helping people move into higher-value work.
• Global HR experience in employee relations, employment law, and compliance across the U.S. and international markets.
• Experience managing HRBPs across regions and time zones.
• Fluency with people data and AI, including using AI tools in your own work and using data to support decisions and explain them clearly.
• Experience using AI and AI-related technologies and readiness to apply AI to business challenges.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a global team of HRBPs across TCO and Strategy & Product in North America, India, EMEA, and Brazil; set a high standard for their advice and develop future HR leaders.
• Advise and challenge C-suite and senior executives on organization, talent, and strategy; share accountability for business results through people decisions, assess those decisions against a people scorecard tied to business outcomes, and provide candid, evidence-based perspectives.
• Design an AI-native organization, including how work is divided between people and AI agents and how teams are structured and operated, including roles, spans, layers, and decision rights.
• Plan headcount, workforce investment, and location strategy in partnership with Finance.
• Define leadership requirements for Avalara’s future, raise performance standards, lead executive talent calibration and succession planning using evidence-based criteria that include effective AI use, build a future-leader bench, and shape leadership development with Learning & Development.
• Set standards for sensitive people matters, including restructurings, leadership transitions, and acquisition integrations, and for responsible AI use in people decisions.
• Partner with Centers of Excellence leaders in Total Rewards, Talent Acquisition, Learning & Development, and People Analytics to tailor enterprise frameworks for technical teams and help set enterprise people priorities and the HR operating model, including the use of AI and data in HR.
• Strengthen Avalara’s culture as an enabler of performance and change by building ownership, urgency, and customer obsession across teams in multiple time zones and holding leaders accountable to these expectations.
• Use AI in everyday work to improve efficiency, contribute solutions, and drive results; stay current on AI trends and best practices and share learnings.

Benefits

• Great compensation package
• Paid time off
• Paid parental leave
• Bonuses for many employees
• Private medical insurance (benefits vary by location)
• Life insurance (benefits vary by location)
• Disability insurance (benefits vary by location)
• Inclusive culture and diversity programs
• Eight employee-run resource groups, each with senior leadership and executive sponsorship

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior