Vice President, HR Business Partnering

Job Description

Reporting into: Chief People Officer

Location: Preferred San Francisco, CA (Open to exceptional talent across the United States with quarterly or more travel)

Join us at Zendesk, where we're on a mission to power exceptional service for every person on the planet. We're accelerating that ambition by building products rooted in AI, automation, and intelligent customer experiences, because behind every interaction lies an opportunity to make a human connection.

We’re seeking a strategic, hands-on Vice President, HR Business Partnering to lead the global people strategy across the enterprise. In this role, you’ll help Zendesk grow with clarity and care—building the organization, leadership capability, and workforce plans that enable our teams to deliver exceptional experiences for customers and employees alike.

As a trusted advisor to senior business leaders, you’ll turn business priorities into practical people strategies while strengthening the systems, talent, and culture that help Zendesk perform at its best.

What You'll Be Doing

• Lead and develop a high-performing global Business Partnering team, setting a clear strategy, operating rhythm, and high bar for partnership.
• Serve as a trusted advisor and coach to executive leaders on organizational effectiveness, leadership capability, talent strategy, performance, succession, and complex people decisions.
• Translate business plans into integrated workforce strategies, including headcount planning, skills and capability needs, location strategy, organizational design, and future workforce scenarios.
• Lead the Employee Relations function, building consistent, fair, and scalable practices for investigations, performance management, conflict resolution, risk mitigation, and employee care across regions.
• Partner with Talent Acquisition, Total Rewards, People Operations, Legal, Finance, and other People teams to deliver cohesive, business-aligned talent solutions.
• Guide organization design and change efforts across evolving enterprise priorities, helping leaders communicate clearly and lead teams through change with empathy and accountability.
• Use people insights, workforce data, and approved AI-enabled tools to improve planning, identify trends and risks, and make People Partnering services more proactive and scalable.
• Build an inclusive, accountable, and high-performing culture by developing leaders, strengthening talent density, and ensuring employees have the clarity and support to do their best work.
• Potential to lead other areas such as Employee Relations and people-related M&A diligence.

What you bring to the role

• You are an enterprise-minded people leader who balances strategic perspective with the judgment and pragmatism to solve real business challenges.
• You build credibility quickly with senior leaders, respectfully challenge assumptions, and turn complex people topics into clear decisions and actions.
• You have deep experience supporting both product and revenue-facing organizations, with an understanding of the different talent, operating-model, and leadership needs of each.
• You lead through change with steadiness and humanity, creating clarity for teams while maintaining high standards for performance and execution.
• You bring sound judgment in sensitive Employee Relations matters, balancing employee experience, business needs, legal considerations, and consistency.
• You are a data-informed operator who can tell the story behind workforce and talent data—and use it to influence business decisions.
• You develop strong leaders and teams, creating an environment where People Partners can operate as strategic advisors rather than transactional support.
• You are comfortable using AI-enabled tools to improve the speed, quality, and impact of your work. You apply critical judgment to validate outputs, understand AI’s limitations and risks, and use approved tools responsibly to protect employee, customer, and company information.

Basic Qualifications

• 15+ years of progressive Human Resources experience, including 10+ years in Human Resources Business Partnering or People Partnering roles and 7+ years leading senior, global HR teams.
• Experience leading a global HRBP organization of comparable scale, including responsibility for teams of approximately 15+ direct and indirect reports.
• Demonstrated experience partnering with executive leaders in Product, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, or other complex GTM organizations within a global technology or SaaS company.
• Deep expertise in organizational design, strategic workforce planning, executive coaching, talent planning, leadership development, performance management, and change management.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience leading People Partnering in a high-growth, global SaaS, enterprise software, AI, or technology company with 2,000+ employees.
• Experience supporting a business through significant transformation, such as rapid growth, operating-model redesign, international expansion, restructuring, or a major shift in product or GTM strategy.
• Demonstrated success using people analytics, HRIS platforms, and workforce-planning tools to improve decisions, forecast workforce needs, and measure organizational health.
• Experience modernizing People Partnering workflows through automation and AI-enabled tools, with strong governance around data privacy, confidentiality, accuracy, and responsible use.
• Experience working in a hybrid, distributed global environment and partnering across North America, EMEA, and APAC.

AI Literacy Requirement

AI literacy is required. Candidates should be comfortable using AI tools to automate and scale HR partner workflows, able to evaluate AI vendors and toolsets, and capable of defining governance for safe, impactful AI deployment across workforce planning and talent analytics. Prior experience implementing AI-augmented HR processes or a clear plan to operationalize AI at scale within an HRBP function is expected.

The intelligent heart of customer experience

Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.

Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.

As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency, we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications for this position, in accordance with Company guidelines and applicable law.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, please click here.

Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process, please send an e-mail to peopleandplaces@zendesk.com with your specific accommodation request.

About Us

Zendesk is on a mission to simplify the complexity of business and make it easy for companies and customers to create connections.

Our customer experience software unlocks the power of billions of interactions, enabling businesses to build rich, meaningful relationships with their customers.

More meaningful moments. Fewer Zoom calls.

What’s it like to work here? Our offices reflect the global cities we call home, and have spaces for collaboration, quiet, and events.

With our hybrid approach, you’ll experience flexibility and connection, collaboration, and learning with your team.

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