HR Business Partner

DISTYL; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity options

Healthcare

Growth opportunities

Job summary

Distyl is seeking its first HR Business Partner reporting to the Head of People to define and build core partnering capabilities. You will collaborate with engineers, researchers, AI strategists, growth, and team leaders to scale our people function.

Expect to coach managers, devise evidence-based frameworks, and guide compensation and org design in a fast-growing environment. You will drive change, create fair, thoughtful systems, and use AI tools daily to document, analyze, and streamline

Qualifications

• 5–8 years in HR with a background in business partnering.
• Embedded partner to leadership teams, coaching employees and managers.
• Experience in a high growth startup environment preferred.
• Experience in org design and change management from design through comms and follow-through.
• Systems thinker who separates symptoms from causes and designs interventions.
• Direct, kind, low ego; outcomes-focused work style.
• Experience with engineers, researchers, or technical leaders; AI company experience a plus.
• Coaching focus: coach managers rather than solve problems for them.

Responsibilities

• Be Distyl's first HR Business Partner reporting to the Head of People.
• Help define business partnering capabilities and build core functions.
• Partner with engineers, researchers, AI strategists, growth, and team leaders.
• Coach managers through growth, feedback, and transitions to strengthen teams.
• Develop evidence-backed frameworks to scale Distyl's people systems.
• Advise on compensation bands, offers, promotions, and merit decisions.
• Lead team-level org design and change, including redesigns and comms.

Skills

HR Business Partner

Coaching

Org design

Change management

People analytics

AI tools awareness

Job description

• You will be Distyl's first HR Business Partner reporting directly to the Head of People
• You will help define what business partnering looks like here, and get to build out our core capabilities in this function
• Your client group includes engineers, researchers, AI strategists, growth, and the leaders who run those teams
• Most of the people you support build and ship technical systems for a living so having a passion for technology and its possibilities is critical
• A typical day might be to coach people through the moments that matter, diagnosing organizational issues and building solutions to them, researching compensation on a novel role, or facilitating a manager skill building session
• This is a true opportunity to put your fingerprints on how we scale our People function
• Partner with managers and leaders: Be the first call for managers across the company on team performance, structure, hiring plans, and the conversations they are putting off. You will listen, offer coaching, back it with evidence, and help the business move forward with your guidance
• Coach: Coach managers and ICs through growth, feedback, and transitions. Make the people who lead teams here measurably better at it, and our teams stronger as a result
• Apply frameworks inside teams: Help to define evidence backed frameworks that allow Distyl to scale and that our systems are designed fairly and thoughtfully
• Advise on compensation: Be fluent in our bands and philosophy so you can guide managers on offers, promotions, and merit decisions
• Lead team-level org design and change: When a team restructures, a leader changes, or scope shifts, you run the change: the design, the sequencing, the comms, and the follow-through
• Read the system: Use engagement data, attrition signals, and what you hear in 1:1s to tell the leadership team what is actually happening in the org before it shows up as a problem
• Work AI-native: Use AI tools daily in your own work, from documentation to analysis to prep and create repeatable systems with it

Benefits

• Equity options and healthcare
• Collaborative and supportive work environment
• Strong focus on personal and professional growth

Comp literacy: You can read a band, explain a leveling decision, and hold the line on an off-cycle request and when an exception might be warrantedBuilder's instinct: You have operated without a playbook and then written one. You are comfortable being first. Experience in a high growth startup environment is preferredOrg design and change management in practice: You have run at least one team-level restructure or leader transition from design through comms and follow-through. You know the difference between an org chart and an orgAt least 5 to 8 years in HR with a background in business partnering: You have been an embedded partner to a leadership team, coached employees and managers through difficult moments, and navigated complex employee relations issues and organizational changes with sound judgment and discretionSystems thinker: You understand the system before you design the intervention. You separate symptoms from causes and resist the quick fixDirect, kind, low ego: You give feedback thoughtfully, care about your work and others around you, and focus more on outcomes than creditTech or AI background, strongly preferred: You have supported engineers, researchers, or technical leaders at a technology company and earned their trust. You understand how technical teams work, what they respect, and what makes them tune out. Experience inside an AI or applied-AI company is a plusCoaching that holds up: You coach managers rather than solve their problems for them, and you can point to leaders who improved because of you