HR Business Partner (Manager)

Could you run an India exit end to end on your own, and hold your position when the person who approves it pushes back?

On a typical day you might coach a pod lead through a performance conversation they have been avoiding in the morning, moderate ratings across two teams with their managers after lunch, and close an exit file with the payroll bureau before the end of day.

About Contour

We started in 2020 with a handful of students and a belief that great education should not be out of reach. Today we operate across three brands with 8,000+ students and 425+ team members: roughly 100 in India and 325 onshore in Australia. The India team runs publishing, student experience, CRM and technology, operations, and people and culture.

We have grown offshore faster than the people function behind it. This is the seat that closes that gap.

About This Role

You own the employment relationship offshore. Employee relations, exits, the performance framework, the compensation cycle, India compliance, attrition, engagement: all of it runs through you.

The boundary is clean. Line managers rate their own people; you calibrate and moderate across the org. Managers deliver their own hard conversations; you build the process behind them and never speak for someone else's manager. The VP of Global Enablement and Support approves anything where pay or level attaches, and owns org design, headcount and band architecture. The onshore Head of People and Culture holds the global standard, and you localise it for India. Everything else is yours.

Two things separate a strong hire here from a competent one. First, you can run an India termination end to end, unsupervised, and produce a file that stands up without anyone checking it. Second, you can hold a position when the person who has to approve it pushes back. Most of this job is judgement carried under real exposure, and those two are the judgement.

You start with a coordinator underneath you who runs the machine: HRIS hygiene, employee queries, letters, onboarding and offboarding execution, leave exceptions, bureau liaison and audit files. You add to the team as volume justifies.

Offshore has grown past 100 people on a function that has never had a dedicated owner. Nobody here currently answers why people leave, what it costs, or whether the paperwork behind a formal process would survive scrutiny. You are the answer to all three.

We plan in six-week cycles, so ninety days is two of them, and the ramp here is one cycle rather than one quarter. By the end of month three you will have carried a formal employee relations process end to end with documentation that stands without review, calibrated a full performance cycle across the offshore org, audited and closed the India policy, Labour Codes and POSH position, delivered the first real answer on why people leave and what it costs, run the first engagement survey with the action plans owned by managers rather than by you, and got the first team events off the ground. What you build in those two cycles is the shape of this function for years.

Where the work lives

Today the stack is Zoho Recruit, with Rippling and Zoho People planned and other options still open. You arrive while that is being decided, so you get a real say in what this function ends up running on. Payroll and statutory filings sit with an external bureau, which means your job is the exposure and the judgement, not the returns. If something is wrong for the function you are building, say so and reshape it.

Could you run an India exit end to end on your own, and hold your position when the person who approves it pushes back?

On a typical day you might coach a pod lead through a performance conversation they have been avoiding in the morning, moderate ratings across two teams with their managers after lunch, and close an exit file with the payroll bureau before the end of day.

About Contour

We started in 2020 with a handful of students and a belief that great education should not be out of reach. Today we operate across three brands with 8,000+ students and 425+ team members: roughly 100 in India and 325 onshore in Australia. The India team runs publishing, student experience, CRM and technology, operations, and people and culture.

We have grown offshore faster than the people function behind it. This is the seat that closes that gap.

About This Role

You own the employment relationship offshore. Employee relations, exits, the performance framework, the compensation cycle, India compliance, attrition, engagement: all of it runs through you.

The boundary is clean. Line managers rate their own people; you calibrate and moderate across the org. Managers deliver their own hard conversations; you build the process behind them and never speak for someone else's manager. The VP of Global Enablement and Support approves anything where pay or level attaches, and owns org design, headcount and band architecture. The onshore Head of People and Culture holds the global standard, and you localise it for India. Everything else is yours.

Two things separate a strong hire here from a competent one. First, you can run an India termination end to end, unsupervised, and produce a file that stands up without anyone checking it. Second, you can hold a position when the person who has to approve it pushes back. Most of this job is judgement carried under real exposure, and those two are the judgement.

You start with a coordinator underneath you who runs the machine: HRIS hygiene, employee queries, letters, onboarding and offboarding execution, leave exceptions, bureau liaison and audit files. You add to the team as volume justifies.

Offshore has grown past 100 people on a function that has never had a dedicated owner. Nobody here currently answers why people leave, what it costs, or whether the paperwork behind a formal process would survive scrutiny. You are the answer to all three.

We plan in six-week cycles, so ninety days is two of them, and the ramp here is one cycle rather than one quarter. By the end of month three you will have carried a formal employee relations process end to end with documentation that stands without review, calibrated a full performance cycle across the offshore org, audited and closed the India policy, Labour Codes and POSH position, delivered the first real answer on why people leave and what it costs, run the first engagement survey with the action plans owned by managers rather than by you, and got the first team events off the ground. What you build in those two cycles is the shape of this function for years.

Where the work lives

Today the stack is Zoho Recruit, with Rippling and Zoho People planned and other options still open. You arrive while that is being decided, so you get a real say in what this function ends up running on. Payroll and statutory filings sit with an external bureau, which means your job is the exposure and the judgement, not the returns. If something is wrong for the function you are building, say so and reshape it.

Requirements

What You Need

You should be able to point to:

• An India termination you ran end to end: the documentation, the statutory exposure, the settlement, and the file that came out of it
  
• An investigation or grievance you carried where the outcome was contested and your process held
  
• A performance cycle you have operated across multiple teams, including a calibration where you moved a manager off a rating they were attached to
  
• A compensation cycle you ran with bands applied, and market data you sourced and then defended in front of someone who did not like it
  
• India policy and Labour Codes work you own properly, including POSH: the committee, the policy, the training, the reporting
  
• Writing that survives legal reading. An investigation summary, a warning letter and an exit file each have to mean exactly one thing, because the second reader is often a lawyer
  
• A position you held against someone senior and were right about, and one where you were wrong and changed it
  

People who can point to all of that are usually five to eight years in.

Nice to Have

• GCC, offshore delivery centre, or multi-country people experience
  
• Having stood a people function up rather than joined one already running
  
• Worked with an external payroll and compliance bureau
  
• Education, EdTech, or another organisation where the product is people's outcomes
  

The Kind of People Who Thrive Here

The people who do well here see a gap and close it without being asked, holding the bar even when the clock is short. They give a direct read on the work in front of them, including when it's wrong, and when their own idea doesn't hold up, they say so and bring a better one. They build something that keeps running after they step back. Problems here don't show up on schedule or in the same shape twice, and they'd rather make the right call on limited information than let something break while they wait for a sign-off. That's the job. They name the blocker and the ask the moment they have it, on a call or a text, because decisions get made on the information you bring.

What good looks like

• Managers get stronger, not dependent: they run their own hard conversations, and bring you in earlier each time rather than later.
  
• Nothing arrives as a surprise: compliance gaps, attrition patterns and flight risks surface from you before they surface as an event.
  
• The function runs at cycle pace: decisions land inside the cycle they were raised in, not the one after.
  

The practical close

Fully remote, anywhere in India. Occasional travel for team events. Compensation details shared early in the hiring process.

Apply with a CV and one paragraph on an exit or employee relations matter you ran end to end, including the point where you held a position someone senior disagreed with.