Senior HR Business Partner, Product & Development

About this role

Safe Software is looking for a Senior HR Business Partner to join our HR team. As a Senior HR Business Partner, you will be embedded with Product & Development — Safe's largest and most tenured organization, spanning Engineering, Product, and R&D — partnering directly with technical leadership to guide change management, talent review, manager development, and performance consulting through the most significant shift in how software gets built in a generation. This role has real impact: it shapes how Safe's engineers and PMs move through an AI-native transformation without losing the delivery muscle that built Safe's platform.

ABOUT THE TEAM

As part of the HR team, you'll join a group of HR professionals who partner directly with business leaders across Safe Software, each embedded with a specific part of the organization. You'll report to the HR Director and be dedicated to Product & Development — Engineering, Product, and R&D — Safe's largest and most tenured org, with deep domain expertise and a career structure already in place. Safe builds FME, the data integration platform trusted by 40,000+ organizations in over 100 countries. Profitable, PE-backed, and on a deliberate path to $250M ARR, P&D is now navigating an active AI change management challenge: reinforcing a strong engineering platform while fundamentally changing how that platform gets built. The HR team is responsible for building the talent strategy, performance practices, and people infrastructure that help the business make that shift without breaking stride. You'll work closely with the VP of Engineering and technical leadership, with a seat at the table from day one.

This is a hybrid role based in Surrey, BC, with 2 days/week in office.

WHAT YOU’LL BE DOING

As a Senior HR Business Partner, you will operate at all altitudes — one week working with the VP of Engineering on org design for a new product area, the next coaching a technical manager through a conversation they've been avoiding for three months. Both are the job.

CHANGE MANAGEMENT AT SCALE

- Be the human systems partner for the AI transition. The hardest part of Safe's AI transformation isn't the tooling — it's the people side. What does high performance look like in an AI-augmented engineering team? How do you lead engineers whose craft is shifting beneath them? How do you maintain psychological safety in a team facing that much uncertainty while still hitting delivery commitments? You help engineering leadership answer those questions before the anxiety answers them instead.

- Hold the tension between delivery and transformation. This org cannot pause to transform — 40,000+ customers are relying on what Safe ships. Your job is to help leaders manage change without letting transformation become a reason to underperform.

TALENT & PERFORMANCE CONSULTING

- Build calibration that changes decisions. Design and run the P&D talent review — 4-box, succession, and talent mapping for technical and leadership roles — quarterly, with outcomes that matter: promotions, development plans, role transitions, and the occasional hard call that's been deferred too long.

- Revamp a career path that's ready for the next chapter. A career pathing framework already exists; what it needs is a fresh definition of what great looks like in an AI-native engineering org — updated levelling expectations, behaviors that reflect how the work is actually changing, and a path that still feels worth staying for.

- Own performance consulting, not performance management. Partner with managers early, co-design development plans with real milestones, have the conversations others are circling, and handle exits with care and precision.

MANAGER DEVELOPMENT

- Take on the highest-leverage work in this role. Most of Safe's engineering managers were promoted for their technical craft. They're excellent builders but many are still learning how to develop people, give honest feedback, and lead through genuine uncertainty. Coaching those managers systematically, not just in a crisis, compounds in a way nothing else does.

- Build a manager readiness framework. Define who is ready to lead, who needs development first, and what good looks like at each stage — for an engineering manager, a senior PM, or a technical director — as a living tool the business actually uses.

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP

- Help leaders see around corners. Your value isn't what you know about HR policy — it's what you see coming that your business partners haven't asked about yet. Org design decisions, headcount sequencing, and team structure ahead of a new product bet: you bring a point of view, not just a process.

- Use data with craft. Attrition trends, calibration distributions, comp equity gaps, engagement signals — the craft is in what you do with them. You bring a point of view to every data conversation, not just a chart.

AI — MAP YOUR OWN LEVERAGE

- Shape how AI changes HRBP work. Every Safer is expected to figure out where AI creates leverage in their own work — there's no approved tool list or workflow guide to follow. As the People partner for the org furthest along on AI adoption at Safe, you're also the most visible example of what AI-augmented professional practice looks like. Arrive curious, map your own processes, experiment deliberately, and share what you learn.

QUALIFICATIONS, SKILLS, AND COMPETENCIES

Safers come from a variety of backgrounds with a diversity in skills and knowledge. That said, we find that those who are most successful in this role have experience with the following areas.

Required skills:

- 8+ years in HRBP roles, with meaningful time embedded in Engineering, Product, or R&D

- Change management experience inside a scaled technical org, not just a growing one

- Direct partnership with VP-level engineering or product leadership, owning the relationship rather than just the process

- A demonstrated track record c

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