Senior HR Business Partner - Engineering, Product, and Design
Decagon is hiring a Senior HR Business Partner - Engineering, Product, and Design in San Francisco, United States. It pays $190k-$240k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Decagon.
Level's read on this job
- Little AI ●○○○ is how Level rates this HR role: aI is not part of the work.
- Pay on this posting starts 58% higher than the typical HR posting on Level.
- The posting mentions AI agents, hrbp and org design among its tools and skills.
- Level classes it as a senior role.
- Decagon has 133 other open roles on Level.
AI in this role
Senior HR Business Partner supporting engineering, product, and design teams at a conversational AI platform company.
About Decagon
Decagon is the leading conversational AI platform empowering every brand to deliver concierge customer experiences.
Our technology enables industry-defining enterprises like Avis Budget Group, Block’s Cash App and Square, Chime, Oura Health, and Hunter Douglas to deploy AI agents that power personalized, deeply satisfying interactions across voice, chat, email, SMS, and every other channel.
We’re building a future where customer experiences are being redefined from support tickets and hold music to faster resolutions, richer conversations, and deeper relationships. We’re proud to be backed by world-class investors who share that vision, including a16z, Accel, Bain Capital Ventures, Coatue, and Index Ventures, along with many others.
We’re an in-office company, driven by a shared commitment to excellence and velocity. Our values — Just Get It Done, Invent What Customers Want, Winner’s Mindset, and The Polymath Principle — shape how we work and grow as a team.
About the Role
As Decagon grows from 400 to 1,000+ employees, we are seeking a Senior HR Business Partner to serve as a trusted advisor to leaders across our Engineering, Product and Design organizations. This is a foundational role: you'll provide hands-on partnership to executives and managers while building out the HRBP function for scale.
You'll help us anticipate organizational needs, shape leadership effectiveness, and ensure our people strategy supports Decagon's rapid SaaS growth — with particular depth in the mechanics of technical teams. You'll also establish the frameworks, playbooks, and practices that will become the backbone of our HRBP team as we scale globally.
In this role, you will own:
Strategic Partnership & Org Effectiveness
Act as a strategic advisor to senior leaders across Engineering, Product and Design orgs
Partner with executives on org design, workforce planning, territory/coverage models, and team effectiveness.
Partner with Finance on headcount planning, sales compensation design, and comp cycle execution for GTM orgs.
Build the playbooks and frameworks — onboarding, ramp, performance calibration, comp cycles — tailored to the pace and structure of Engineering, Product & Design teams.
Performance, Coaching & Culture
Provide coaching to leaders and managers on performance, feedback, and people leadership, including sitting in on difficult conversations and providing immediate, actionable feedback.
Coach frontline and second-line engineering & product leaders on inspection rigor and differentiating performance in a quota-driven environment.
Drive consistent and fair performance management, promotions, and career development processes.
Use people and business data — attrition, impact, productivity — to proactively flag talent and retention risk before it becomes a business problem.
Employee Relations & Leadership Coaching
Serve as a trusted advisor on complex employee relations matters within Engineering & Product, balancing fairness, business need, and compliance.
Build a culture of trust and transparency by advising leaders on communication, recognition, and engagement strategies.
Cross-Functional Collaboration & Change
Collaborate with People Ops, People COEs, and Talent Acquisition to ensure seamless onboarding, engagement, and employee experience.
Own change management initiatives, guiding teams through periods of transformation and growth.
Define and implement the HRBP operating model, setting the foundation for a growing HRBP team.
Serve as a cultural ambassador, ensuring our values are embedded in everyday leadership and decision-making.
Your background looks something like this
8+ years of experience in HR, with a strong track record as an HRBP or People Partner in high-growth SaaS or tech companies, ideally supporting Engineering, Product, Design teams.
Experience advising executive and senior leaders across multiple functions.
Expertise in org design, change management, workforce planning, and succession planning.
Strong understanding of performance management, employee relations, compensation, and engagement practices.
Demonstrated ability to scale HRBP or People Partner functions from early stages into mature teams.
Excellent interpersonal and communication skills; able to build trust at all levels of the company.
Comfortable operating in both strategic and hands-on capacities in a dynamic, fast-changing environment.
Even better if you have
You thrive in hypergrowth SaaS environments where ambiguity is the norm.
You bring global HR experience (multi-country orgs, EORs, compliance at scale) — particularly relevant given Decagon's Engineering & Product orgs are among the first to scale internationally.
You've worked closely with Finance on headcount planning and engineering capacity planning.
You bring an AI-forward mindset to HR operations — using tools to automate repetitive HRBP work and free up time for strategic partnership.
Benefits
We proudly offer the following benefits for our full-time employees:
Medical, Dental, and Vision benefits for you and your family
Life Insurance and Disability Benefits
Retirement Plan (e.g., 401K, pension)
Parental Leave
Fertility and family building benefits through Carrot
Monthly stipend to support your wellness, lifestyle, and work-life balance
Daily lunches and snacks in the office to keep you at your best
Take what you need vacation policy (subject to local requirements; UK employees receive 25 days of statutory leave)
These benefits are described in more detail in Decagon’s policies, may vary by location, and can change at any time according to applicable compensation and benefits plans.
How we rate this
Senior HR Business Partner - Engineering, Product, and Design at Decagon rates 10 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Little AI (AI Level 1 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Little AI. AI is not part of the work.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Also common in HR jobs at this level
Pay
- This job starts at
- $190k
- Typical HR job
- $120k
This posting starts 58% above the typical HR job. See HR jobs
Questions you could be asked
- How do you decide when an AI agent can act on its own versus asking for approval first?
- Tell me about a project where hrbp was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where org design was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where talent management was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where coaching was part of your work. What did you do?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: AI agents, Hrbp, Org Design, Talent Management, and Coaching. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
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