Senior HR Business Partner, India

Location: Mumbai, India
Department: People

About the Team

The HR Business Partner team at OpenAI supports managers and employees as teams grow, perform and adapt. We work alongside managers at all levels to resolve day-to-day people challenges, build management capability and create the conditions for teams to do their best work.

Our expertise spans team effectiveness, talent development, manager coaching, employee relations and change management, grounded in our Contributions & Impact (C&I) culture. We operate with urgency, empathy and sound judgment, valuing sincerity, collaboration and meaningful impact.

About the Role

We’re looking for a Senior HR Business Partner. This role will primarily support teams in India, with a focus on Go-to-Market and selected other functions. The portfolio may also include support for teams in other APAC markets as business needs evolve. You’ll provide hands-on support to managers at all levels, owning day-to-day people work and helping teams grow and scale effectively.

Your GTM partnership will span teams such as Sales, Technical Success, Partnerships and Marketing. Across your portfolio, you’ll build a deep understanding of business priorities and use that context to prioritise and deliver practical people support.

As a hands-on partner to managers at all levels, you will use independent judgment to coach managers, resolve people issues and follow through on day-to-day work as teams scale. You will own delivery across your portfolio, working closely with the International HRBP Leader, Recruiting, Finance, Employment Legal and People centres of expertise, and involving specialist partners when needed.

This is an individual contributor role, based in Mumbai or Bangalore. We operate in a hybrid work model: three days in the office per week.

Your Key Responsibilities

• Own day-to-day people support across your portfolio, with a primary focus on GTM. Be a practical point of contact for managers on performance, employee relations, team changes and development. Prioritise issues, agree clear next steps and see them through to resolution as teams scale.

• Support teams as they grow. Help managers put agreed team structures and workforce plans into practice, clarify roles and address capacity needs as teams across your portfolio grow and scale existing operations. Coordinate with Finance and Recruiting to support hiring and team changes.

• Build manager effectiveness. Coach managers at all levels, from first-time managers to experienced people managers, on feedback, difficult conversations, team dynamics and accountability. Help them address everyday people challenges with clarity and care.

• Build capability and succession. Help managers identify skills and development needs across GTM teams. Partner on talent reviews, succession planning, internal mobility and development, with particular attention to roles essential to customer and business outcomes.

• Drive performance and rewards decisions. Help managers set clear expectations, address underperformance and recognise contributions consistently. Partner with Compensation and Sales Compensation specialists on people implications of incentive structures, role changes and rewards decisions.

• Lead through organisational change. Guide organisational changes and sensitive employee matters across your portfolio, partnering with Employment Legal and Employee Relations specialists. Balance business urgency, local requirements and fair, consistent treatment.

• Use insight to act early. Combine workforce data, business context and employee feedback to identify emerging risks, test assumptions and recommend action. Track whether interventions improve capability, retention and team effectiveness.

• Scale effective People practices. Partner with global HRBPs and centres of expertise to evolve performance, engagement and talent programmes across your portfolio, ensuring local needs inform global decisions and local delivery remains practical.

What You Bring

• Substantial HRBP experience. Typically 7–10+ years in HR, including at least five years supporting managers and teams in high-growth, international or complex organisations. We value the scope and impact of your experience.

• Commercial understanding. Experience supporting Sales and other go-to-market functions, with an understanding of enterprise sales cycles, customer-facing roles and the people implications of commercial operating models.

• Hands-on manager partnership. A record of supporting managers at all levels, resolving day-to-day people issues and owning delivery across a busy portfolio. You can exercise independent judgment, challenge constructively and build trusted relationships.

• India experience. Experience supporting teams in India, navigating local business and employment environments, with sound judgment about when to involve specialist partners.

• Organisational and talent judgment. Practical experience supporting team growth, workforce planning, manager coaching, performance management and talent development, including delivering change through ambiguity.

• Analytical and execution strength. The ability to diagnose problems using data and context, make clear recommendations and follow through. You prioritise effectively, take ownership of complex people issues and stay close to the details through resolution.

• Integrity and care. Discretion with sensitive matters, fairness in decision-making and a willingness to listen, adapt and act with conviction.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity. 

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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