Human Resources Business Partner

Thinking Machines Lab Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, and vision benefits

Unlimited PTO

Paid parental leave

Relocation support

Visa sponsorship available

Job summary

Thinking Machines Lab in San Francisco seeks an HR Business Partner to merge leadership coaching with people-systems design. You will mentor managers, influence performance, and help shape talent strategy for researchers and engineers.

You will build scalable processes, from compensation frameworks to career leveling, and establish feedback and evaluation practices that align with a high-trust, innovative lab culture.

Qualifications

• 5+ years experience leading as a people leader or HR business partner in a high-growth tech environment.
• Fluency with employment law and best practices in North America.
• Proven track record of developing HR practices and supporting a diverse talent pool.

Responsibilities

• Coach managers by observing leadership and guiding continuous improvement.
• Advise leadership on team structure, succession planning, and strategic people choices.
• Design compensation structures to attract top machine learning talent while aligning with company values.
• Create career leveling frameworks for a research lab where advancement isn’t always about managing people.
• Build feedback and evaluation processes that help people improve, not just be measured.
• Collaborate with researchers and engineers to align talent strategy with research goals.

Skills

People leadership

HR business partner

Employment law

Diversity & inclusion

Job description

HR Business Partner

Thinking Machines Lab's mission is to empower humanity through advancing collaborative general intelligence. We're building a future where everyone has access to the knowledge and tools to make AI work for their unique needs and goals.

We are scientists, engineers, and builders who’ve created some of the most widely used AI products, including ChatGPT and Character.ai, open-weights models like Mistral, as well as popular open source projects like PyTorch, OpenAI Gym, Fairseq, and Segment Anything.

Thinking Machines Lab's mission is to empower humanity through advancing collaborative general intelligence. We're building a future where everyone has access to the knowledge and tools to make AI work for their unique needs and goals.

We are a small team of scientists, engineers, and builders who've created some of the most widely used AI products including ChatGPT, Character.ai, and PyTorch. As we scale our team, some of the hardest challenges we face are about empowering and aligning our people and helping our managers make crucial decisions under uncertainty.

About the Role

The new role of HR Business Partner will combine two tasks: leadership coaching, and people systems design. The two require different skillsets, but a shared vision for managing talent.

You will coach managers at Thinking Machines Lab to be more effective leaders. You will provide strategic support on researcher and engineer performance, team dynamics, and personal growth. You will also build the people infrastructure that will scale this support as the company grows: performance and feedback systems, compensation structures, and career frameworks.

What You’ll Do

• Coach managers by observing how they lead, identifying strengths and blind spots, and working on continuous improvement.
• Advise leadership on organizational decisions: team structure, succession planning, and strategic people choices that shape how we work.
• Design compensation structures that let us compete for the best machine learning talent in the world while staying aligned on values and principles.
• Create career/leveling frameworks that work for a research lab where career advancement often doesn’t mean managing people, contributions such as mentorship and taste are harder to measure, and where senior researchers expect to grow and learn even after a decade in the role.
• Build feedback and evaluation processes that help people improve, not just get measured.

Skills and Qualifications

• 5+ years experience working as a people leader or HR business partner in a high-growth technical environment.
• Fluency with employment law and best practices in North America.
• Proven track record of developing HR practices and supporting a diverse set of talent.

Preferred qualifications:

• 10+ years experience as a people leader or HR business partner.
• Experience in setting up novel systems that scale in a fast-growing company.
• Coaching experience that showcases a skill set in providing confidential support, motivating improvement, and conflict resolution.
• Track record of supporting a high trust and low ego environment for high caliber talent with strong retention and growth.

Logistics

• Location: This role is based in San Francisco, California.
• Compensation: Depending on background, skills and experience, the expected annual salary range for this position is $190,000 - $300,000 USD.
• Visa sponsorship: We sponsor visas. While we can't guarantee success for every candidate or role, if you're the right fit, we're committed to working through the visa process together.
• Benefits: Thinking Machines offers generous health, dental, and vision benefits, unlimited PTO, paid parental leave, and relocation support as needed.
• As set forth in Thinking Machines' Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

As set forth in Thinking Machines' Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

Thinking Machines Lab will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of the California Fair Chance Act, the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, and any other applicable state or local fair chance ordinance or law.