Senior HR Business Partner

King's College London; Greater London; On-site; GBP 65,000 - 85,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading university in London is seeking a Senior HR Business Partner to align HR strategies with business priorities. This full-time position involves advising senior stakeholders, leading HR initiatives, and managing a small team. Ideal candidates will have significant HR experience in complex environments, strong coaching skills, and a thorough understanding of employment law. The role is a key part of the HR team, contributing to effective organizational changes and people strategies.

Qualifications

• Significant HR generalist experience within a complex, ambiguous and unionised environment.
• Strong coaching, facilitating and negotiating skills with senior stakeholders.
• Experience of leading and managing organisational change.

Responsibilities

• Align HR vision with business aims and strategic priorities.
• Act as a trusted partner providing strategic advice on people matters.
• Manage a small team and develop HR initiatives.

Skills

HR generalist experience

Coaching and negotiating skills

Organizational change management

Employment law knowledge

Data analysis

Team management and coaching

Job description

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About us

Kings has over 40,000 students from over 150 countries studying in person and online, and has over 12,000 employees. Together the King's community delivers a comprehensive portfolio of outstanding and impactful research and education in close partnership with the vibrant arts and culture ecosystem across London along with other universities and partners across the globe. We are ranked 31st in the world (QS World University Rankings 2026) and 36th in the world (Times Higher Education World Rankings 2025).

King's College London offers an intellectually stimulating environment in which to work, where staff are dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and learning in the service of society. It is a particularly exciting time to be joining the University as it prepares to embark on its new 2030 strategy. The HR department, and in particular the HR Business Partnering team, will play a key role in supporting the university in delivering effectively on this new strategy.

About the role

Senior HR Business Partners are the front face of HR, responsible for working with central Directorates and Faculties to align our vision and our people. Working with a dedicated client group of key central professional services directorates you will act as a trusted and credible partner, providing strategic advice, support and guidance on a full range of people matters.

Through an understanding of the business aims and strategic priorities of your client group you will work with senior stakeholders to identify people priorities, shape solutions to their people challenges and drive forward positive change. Using your expertise and knowledge of best practice, you will challenge stakeholders to think more broadly and deeply about people matters.

You will manage a small team and work with colleagues across the HR directorate, drawing on specialist expertise as needed, in the development of local initiatives and will bring business challenges and priorities back to the HR directorate to help shape the development of central initiatives and policies.

This is a full time role (35 hours per week) and you will be offered an indefinite contract.

About you

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

1. Significant HR generalist experience within a complex, ambiguous and unionised environment, with proven success in delivering impactful strategic HR initiatives.
2. Strong coaching, facilitating and negotiating skills, with experience of working in partnership with senior stakeholders.*.
3. Significant experience of leading and managing organisational change.
4. Strong knowledge of employment law and HR best practice, alongside commercial and financial understanding, to enable demonstrable business focussed advice and decision making.
5. Experience of leading and managing ER casework, both formally and informally.
6. Ability to analyse complex data, identify trends and use findings to inform people strategy and initiatives.
7. Evidenced ability to develop, manage and coach team members.

Downloading a copy of our Job Description

Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, provided at the bottom of the page. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.

Further information

At King's, we believe that the diversity of our community and a culture that is welcoming, open, inclusive and collaborative, are great strengths of the university.

The Equality Act of 2010 protects the rights of our students and staff and provides a framework to fulfil our duties to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and in addition, to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between those who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. At times, this will include balancing rights and beliefs that can feel in tension.

We are committed to free speech and to academic freedom, believing that our foundational purpose as a university, is to create spaces where a wide range of ideas, including ideas that are controversial, can be discussed and debated, and where members of our community can express lawful views without fear of intimidation, harassment or discrimination.

When engaging in the robust exchange of ideas, we ask that our community is mindful of our Dignity at King's guidance.

We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the person specification section of the job description. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

To find out how our managers will review your application, please take a look at our 'How we Recruit' pages.