Senior HR Business Partner (Fixed-term Contract)

Deepgram is the leading platform in the Voice AI economy, offering innovative speech technologies. They are seeking a Senior HR Business Partner for a fixed-term contract to maintain employee relations, performance management, and people practices during a maternity leave coverage period.

Responsibilities:

• Serve as the primary point of contact for employee relations matters, including performance concerns, interpersonal issues, investigations, and complex workplace scenarios
• Coach managers through difficult conversations, feedback delivery, performance management, and documentation
• Provide consistent, fair, and legally sound guidance across key employee lifecycle moments
• Act as a trusted advisor to leaders on people-related risks, decisions, and trade-offs
• Partner with the Head of People to maintain alignment between company strategy and people practices
• Identify patterns and systemic issues early and recommend practical, upstream interventions
• Serve as a change partner to leaders, helping operationalize organizational changes to drive understanding, adoption, and trust
• Support ongoing performance management processes, goal-setting, feedback cycles, and manager capability building
• Partner with leaders on team structure, talent planning, and ways of working that enable strong performance
• Help managers navigate underperformance, role clarity challenges, and organizational change
• Reinforce a culture of high performance without unnecessary bureaucracy
• Maintain and apply existing People processes, templates, documentation, and manager resources
• Partner on tools and workflows that improve consistency, efficiency, and employee experience
• Balance compliance, speed, and sound judgment as the company continues to grow
• Support change initiatives (e.g., policy updates, process shifts), including re-education, leader enablement, and reinforcement
• Partner with People Ops, Legal, and Finance to ensure compliance with federal, state, local, and international employment laws
• Support leave administration, policy application, and complex employee situations
• Help ensure People practices remain defensible, consistent, and aligned with company values
• Serve as the primary HR point of contact for immigration matters, partnering with recruiters to assess visa needs and timelines during the hiring process
• Manage the day-to-day relationship with the external immigration law firm
• Support employees through immigration processes (H-1B, transfers, green card sponsorship, etc.), providing guidance on timelines and next steps
• Partner with Legal, Finance, and People Ops to ensure immigration sponsorship decisions are consistent, compliant, and aligned with company policy

Requirements:

• 7–10+ years of HR experience, including at least 5 years in an HR Business Partner role within high-growth or complex environments
• Strong business judgment and the ability to understand context quickly, challenge assumptions when needed, and guide leaders through tough trade-offs
• Deep experience in employee relations, performance management, and manager coaching
• Demonstrated ability to ramp up quickly in a new environment and deliver results with limited onboarding time
• Comfort operating synchronously and asynchronously in a remote-first, fast-paced, evolving environment
• Strong written and verbal communication skills and a high degree of discretion
• Experience supporting distributed, remote-first teams
• Prior work in a fast-growing startup or tech environment
• Prior experience in contract or interim HR roles