Senior People Partner

What You'll Do

The Senior People Partner is a strategic advisor, trusted coach, and operational co-pilot to Directors and Vice Presidents across Avalara’s global business units. In this role, you will align people and organizational strategies directly with business priorities, operational scaling, and global growth.
Operating at the intersection of business partnering, organizational architecture, and high-trust coaching, you will champion agility and guide leaders through transformational change. You will leverage modern AI-native operating frameworks to streamline workflows, optimize team structures, and elevate talent density. This role blends forward-looking strategy with autonomous, hands-on execution across workforce planning, organizational design, talent management, complex employee relations, and cross-functional People Center of Excellence (COE) partnerships.

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What Your Responsibilities Will Be

• Executive Advisory & Coaching: Partner with Directors and VPs to translate business strategy into high-impact talent strategies, coaching leaders to hold high performance standards, navigate ambiguity, and own critical team decisions.
• Autonomous BU Partnering: Serve as the primary People Partner for assigned business unit pods, exercising independent judgment to align cross-functional teams, navigate complex organizational dynamics, and resolve business challenges.
• Org Design & Span Optimization: Lead business unit restructures, team consolidations, and structural flattening to support expanding business portfolios and evolving operating models.
• Transformational Change Management: Guide leaders and global teams through major organizational shifts, operating model evolutions, and agile workflow transitions with clear communication.
• Workforce Architecture & Capacity: Partner with Talent Acquisition and Finance to evaluate hiring needs—evaluating backfills for redesign or automation opportunities—and model capacity so output scales faster than headcount.
• Talent Calibration & Density: Facilitate business unit talent reviews and calibrations with the Talent Management COE, establishing disciplined performance distributions and mitigating talent drag.
• Complex Investigations & Adjudication: Autonomously lead formal employee relations investigations and grievance processes, delivering objective findings and risk assessments in partnership with Legal.
• Performance Management & Separations: Oversee formal Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) quality and milestone tracking, structuring and managing involuntary separations, severance packages, and mutual exits in compliance with employment regulations.
• Succession & Retention: Build succession pipelines for business-critical roles, identify flight risks, and design targeted development and retention plans for high-performing talent.
• Reward Governance & Pay Parity: Partner with the Compensation COE to review out-of-band comp requests, evaluate retention dive-and-save cases, and ensure equitable compensation across geographic bands and cross-border transfers.
• Team Health & Culture: Partner with Talent Development and Culture teams to analyze engagement diagnostics, lead action planning, and champion inclusion.
• Leadership Enablement: Coach managers on delivering continuous, evidence-based feedback, managing team dynamics, and developing high-performing teams.
• AI Tool Fluency: Leverage modern AI platforms and HR technology to synthesize coaching frameworks, analyze workforce trends, draft complex case dossiers, and automate administrative overhead.
• AI Governance & Operating Model Transformation: Act as the human-in-the-loop owner for AI agent workflows (auditing recommendations for fairness and compliance) and guide leaders on redesigning manager roles around high-judgment decision-making rather than routine status coordination.

What You’ll Need To Be Successful

• Progressive Strategic HR Partnering: 7+ years of progressive HR experience, with demonstrated success as a dedicated HRBP/People Partner advising Directors and VPs.
• Core HR Domain Mastery: Strong coaching skills with proven expertise in organizational design, talent management, and employee relations.
• Global SaaS & Matrixed Environment: Proven ability to advise senior leaders and partner with P&C COEs in a fast-paced, highly matrixed, global B2B SaaS organization supporting global functional or business unit teams.
• Employment Law & ER Mastery: Deep expertise independently managing complex employee relations investigations, formal performance turnarounds, and separation workflows under US employment law, with general awareness of cross-border international employment practices.

Agility, Transformation & Systems Competencies

• High adaptability to pivot quickly in a fast-evolving SaaS environment, with proven experience leading large-scale organizational transformations and change management initiatives.
• Ability to map end-to-end organizational workflows, diagnose operational friction, create process flows, and design scalable operating systems.
• Strong capability to establish baseline measures, analyze workforce data, model turnover/retention dynamics, and present data-backed recommendations to executive leaders.
• High comfort using AI tools and HRIS ecosystems (e.g., Workday) to accelerate insights, eliminate manual administrative drag, and streamline HR processes.
• Strong executive presence with the confidence to coach and challenge senior leaders, push back constructively, and hold managers accountable for team health and talent outcomes.
• High degree of autonomy and sound judgment to navigate ambiguity, prioritize high-stakes initiatives, and resolve complex issues independently.
• Exceptional communication, facilitation, and relationship-building skills across distributed global teams, regional stakeholders, and People COEs.

Avalara is an AI-first Company

AI is embedded in our workflows, decision-making, and products.  Success here requires embracing AI as an essential capability.

• You’ll bring experience using AI and AI-related technologies, ready to thrive here.

• You’ll apply AI every day to business challenges - improving efficiency, contributing solutions, and driving results for your team, our company, and our customers.

• You’ll grow with AI by staying curious about new trends and best practices, and by sharing what you learn so others can benefit too.

How We’ll Take Care Of You

Total Rewards 

In addition to a great compensation package, paid time off, and paid parental leave, many Avalara employees are eligible for bonuses. 

Health & Wellness
Benefits vary by location but generally include private medical, life, and disability insurance. 

Inclusive culture and diversity 
Avalara strongly supports diversity, equity, and inclusion, and is committed to integrating them into our business practices and our organizational culture. We also have a total of 8 employee-run resource groups, each with senior leadership and exec sponsorship. 

What You Need To Know About Avalara

We’re defining the relationship between tax and tech.

We’ve already built an industry-leading cloud compliance platform, processing over 54 billion customer API calls and over 6.6 million tax returns a year. Our growth is real - we're a billion dollar business - and we’re not slowing down until we’ve achieved our mission - to be part of every transaction in the world.

We’re bright, innovative, and disruptive, like the orange we love to wear. It captures our quirky spirit and optimistic mindset. It shows off the culture we’ve designed, that empowers our people to win. We’ve been different from day one. Join us, and your career will be too.

We’re An Equal Opportunity Employer

Supporting diversity and inclusion is a cornerstone of our company — we don’t want people to fit into our culture, but to enrich it. All qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, age, gender, national orientation, disability, sexual orientation, US Veteran status, or any other factor protected by law. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.