HR Business Partner

About Traversal

Traversal is the AI Site Reliability Engineer (AI SRE) for the enterprise.

Production complexity was already outpacing what engineering teams could manage manually, and AI-generated code is accelerating that gap. Traversal is built for that challenge, autonomously understanding and reasoning across even the largest, most complex production environments to diagnose, fix, and prevent incidents. Our mission is to free engineers from endless firefighting and give them more time to focus on creative, high-impact work.

Today, Traversal operates in mission-critical environments at some of the world’s largest enterprises, including PepsiCo, Nubank, Harvey, and DigitalOcean. Our roots remain deeply embedded in AI research, and we’ve brought together researchers from institutions including MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, Columbia, and Cornell with world-class technical staff and operators from companies like Google, Meta, Datadog, ServiceNow, and Citadel Securities to take on one of the hardest problems for AI to solve. Traversal is backed by Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Redpoint Ventures, and Khosla Ventures.

The Role

As our HR Business Partner, you'll shape how our team is supported, developed, and set up to do its best work as we grow. This role is ideal for someone who can advise leaders on big people decisions in the morning and fix a broken onboarding workflow in the afternoon, and who cares about getting both right.

You'll partner with our founders and leaders on org health, performance, and people strategy. You'll also own the full employee lifecycle, from onboarding through offboarding, handle employee relations, and lead core programs like performance reviews and compensation cycles. You'll work closely with leadership, Finance, Legal, and Recruiting, and you'll have a lot of room to build and automate the systems that support our people as we scale.

Responsibilities

• Strategic People Partner: Be a trusted advisor to leaders on org health, performance, team dynamics, and manager effectiveness. Turn business priorities into clear people recommendations and action plans.
• Employee Relations & Performance: Own ER and performance cases end-to-end. That includes investigating issues, coaching managers through documentation, and guiding decisions in line with company policy and employment law.
• Core People Programs: Lead and improve the programs that keep the company running: performance reviews, talent reviews, engagement, compensation cycles, and manager enablement.
• Onboarding & First 90 Days: Own the new hire experience from pre-boarding through the 90-day mark. That covers paperwork and I-9s, account setup, day-one orientation, check-ins, and a buddy program. Remote and in-office hires should get an equally strong start.
• Employee Lifecycle: Run internal transfers, promotions, terminations, and offboarding. Hold exit interviews and bring the themes back to leadership to improve retention and reduce risk.
• Front Line for Questions: Be the first stop for employee and manager questions. Resolve what you can, route what you can't, and make sure nothing sits unanswered.
• Policy & Compliance: Write and update HR policies, handbooks, and processes. Keep the company compliant with federal, state, and local employment law as we grow.
• Data-Driven Insight: Use HRIS data to spot patterns, recurring pain points, and talent risks, then recommend practical fixes to leaders.
• Build & Automate: Don't just run the process, build it. Write SOPs other people can actually use, and use AI and automation to take repetitive work (status chasing, packet assembly, case intake) off the team's plate.
• Cross-Functional Partner: Work closely with Legal, Finance/Payroll, IT, Recruiting, and Workplace so handoffs are seamless.

Requirements

• 5–8 years in HR at a high-growth company, with a mix of HRBP/generalist and people operations work.
• Broad HR Expertise: Hands-on depth in employee relations, performance management, onboarding and offboarding, and compensation cycles. You've handled sensitive situations on your own.
• Employment Law Fluency: Working knowledge of federal, state, and local employment law, including I-9 and eligibility verification. You know when to flag something to Legal.
• Strategic and Hands-On: You can advise a founder on org design in the morning and fix a broken onboarding workflow in the afternoon. No task is beneath you.
• Systems & AI Savvy: Comfortable with HRIS and ticketing tools. You reach for AI and automation by instinct to create leverage.
• Clear Communicator: You write clear, professional documentation with minimal review, build trust quickly, and push back thoughtfully when it matters.
• Builder Mindset: You're at your best in ambiguous, fast-moving environments, and your processes are written down, current, and usable by someone else.

Compensation

We offer competitive compensation, startup equity, health insurance, and additional benefits. The U.S. base salary range for this full-time, in-person role in New York is $160,000 - $200,000, plus equity and benefits. Our salary ranges are based on location, level, and role. Individual compensation is determined by experience, skills, and job-related knowledge.

Why You Should Join Us

Traversal is a place to take on hard, meaningful problems with real ownership from day one. You’ll work alongside people who challenge you to grow, learn constantly, and help define a new category of infrastructure software. We think long term, move quickly, and hold a high bar without taking ourselves too seriously.

We offer competitive salary and equity packages, health insurance, fertility benefits, a great tech setup stipend and flexible time off. Plus in-office snacks, team happy hours and outings, an annual company offsite, and plenty of built in time to collaborate across teams.

Traversal is fully in-office, 5 days a week, based in New York near Madison Square Park. We have a collaborative, hard-working culture and are energized by building the future of AI-powered software maintenance.