Senior Director, HR Business Partner (GTM)

Relay • Raleigh, North Carolina, United States • • 1w ago

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Relay is building the next generation of human-in-the-loop Physical AI — intelligent systems that don't just live in data centers and dashboards, but operate in the real world: embedded in the workflows of the people who build, move, and maintain the physical infrastructure of the modern economy.

Our Relay platform brings AI-native situational awareness, real-time operational intelligence, and automated decision support to frontline environments. Where legacy software stops at the edge of the office, Relay's platform goes all the way to the floor — turning unstructured operational data into coordinated action, at scale, in real time.

Why Join Relay?

A Proven Winner: Join a hyper-growth company trusted by over 10% of the Fortune 500, continuing to move upmarket with massive impact.
High Value, High Impact: With 47% of our revenue from $100K+ ARR customers and 135% Net Revenue Retention (NRR), you'll be joining a company rooted in value creation.
Market-Leading Innovation: The Relay platform captures 1 billion new data points weekly and features award-winning AI tools like TeamTranslate™, with 500% YoY growth.
World-Class Leadership: Our stellar leadership team is built to help us scale toward our next major milestones.
The Relay Culture: We're dedicated to helping you do the best work of your life (BWIML), investing in your growth through L.I.T., living our CHASE values, and learning from incredibly talented, supportive teammates who make the work (and the wins) better every day.

Now, here's what we're building, and where you come in.

We are hiring a Senior Director, GTM People Services Business Partner to serve as the dedicated business partner for our go-to-market organization, including Sales, Customer Success, Marketing, and Business Development. This individual will be a strategic thought leader supporting the revenue engine at Relay.

You will be the trusted advisor to four executive leaders and the coach and escalation point for the managers and individual contributors within their functions. GTM teams have a high bar and expectations all around. From quota and attainment, hiring and ramping in cohorts/Pod structures, promoting top performers while supporting their growth and development, knowing the market firsthand based on their experience with customers, to their comp being variable and incentivized based on their performance. This role requires someone who genuinely understands that operating environment — not someone who applies generic HR programs to it.

We are looking for a first-principles operator. You will support teams that, at times, face significant ambiguity, with heavy seasons of change management and communication needs. You will be responsible for aligning, supporting, and influencing the leaders of the GTM teams so they can lead with confidence and ensure the business hits its revenue goals.

Why This Role Matters Now

Building a trusted partnership with GTM leaders is the number-one priority. This role must bring an engaged, knowledgeable, and collaborative spirit to this team.
Relay is scaling quickly, and GTM headcount is the fastest-growing part of the company. Partnering with the managers on talent acquisition strategy efforts is essential.
Our GTM leaders are strong operators who need a peer-level people partner. We are seeking someone who can challenge a plan, pressure-test an org design, and bring a thoughtful perspective that helps shape the teams as we scale.
Our people partners will be training our managers and emerging leaders within the organization. This role will be responsible for co-delivering these programs with another Business Partner who will own the programs.

What You’ll Own

Executive Partnership & Business Fluency

Become fluent in the GTM business. In order to be a trusted partner, you will need to spend time in the business to understand the sales motions, segments of each group, pod structures, and how they operate, and be a supporter of the QBRs.
Serve as a true business partner to the Head of Sales, Head of CS, and Head of Marketing. Build the relationship depth required to be in the room for consequential decisions — org changes, segment/sector moves, leadership hires, performance calls — before they are made.
Translate business priorities into a people services agenda. Own a rolling GTM people plan tied to revenue objectives, with clear priorities, owners, and measures of success. Say no to work that doesn’t move the number or protect the culture.
Coach at every level. Advise executives on their own leadership and team design; coach frontline managers on the hard parts of the job; be accessible and credible to ICs without undermining the management chain. Be a trusted partner for all team members, no matter their level within the organization. Lead with heart and a strong backbone.

Organizational Design, Leveling & Workforce Planning

Design GTM org structures that scale. Partner on segmentation and coverage models, span of control, player-coach vs. pure-manager decisions, supporting AE levels along with up-market motions into our Enterprise sectors, and emerging vs. named-account approaches.
Build and maintain GTM job architecture and leveling. Work with our Total Rewards leader to create clear, consistently applied career ladders and level definitions for quota-carrying, post-sale, and marketing specialist tracks, including dual IC/manager paths so we can retain senior individual contributors.
Advise on build-vs-buy for talent. Bring a clear point of view on FTE vs. contractor vs. agency in Marketing, offshore/nearshore and pooled coverage models in CS, and outsourced vs. in-house SDR capacity.

GTM Compensation & Incentive Design

Support Benchmark and defend GTM pay competitiveness. Partner with our Total Rewards leader to understand market data to keep ranges credible across sales, CS, and marketing roles and geographies; identify where we are losing candidates or people on comp and bring a remedy, not just a report.
Run comp planning cycles for the GTM org in collaboration with our Total Rewards Leader. Manage merit, promotion, equity refresh, and off-cycle decisions with a bias toward differentiating meaningfully for top performers. Equip managers to deliver comp conversations well.
Ensure incentive design drives the intended behavior. Stress-test plans for unintended consequences — sandbagging, discounting, churn-and-burn selling, single-threaded deals, or misaligned handoffs between sales and CS.

Talent Density, Performance & Retention

Raise the hiring bar with Talent Acquisition. Partner with TA teams to enhance GTM scorecards, structured interview loops, work samples (mock discovery calls, pitch exercises, writing samples, portfolio reviews), calibrated debriefs, offer strategy, and closing senior candidates.
Partner with Sales Leaders to define ramp-to-productivity. Define what “ramped” means by role, measure time-to-first-deal and time-to-full-productivity, and work with Enablement and managers to shorten it. Diagnose ramp failures as hiring, onboarding, territory, or management problems — and fix the right one.
Drive a performance rhythm that aligns with a quota-driven culture. Build a cadence of clear expectations, frequent coaching, and honest attainment-based assessment. Ensure attainment is read in context — territory quality, quota fairness, tenure, segment — rather than as a single number.
Move decisively on underperformance. Coach managers to intervene early and act quickly, using well-documented performance plans and a clear distinction among skill, will, role-fit, and management problems.
Protect and grow talent density. Run talent reviews, calibration, and succession planning across GTM; identify high-potential ICs and future leaders; build retention plans for the people we cannot afford to lose.
Understand and reduce regrettable attrition. Own GTM attrition analysis — voluntary vs. involuntary, regrettable vs. non-regrettable, cut by manager, tenure, segment, and attainment — and turn findings into specific interventions.

Manager Capability & Leadership Effectiveness

Build a leadership bench. Identify and develop the next layer of GTM leaders; create stretch opportunities, mentoring, and targeted development for high-potential managers and directors.
Partner with Enablement. Work alongside the enablement team to help support onboarding and training the teams.

Employee Relations & Risk

Handle high-stakes employee relations with sound judgment. Investigate and resolve conduct, harassment, and performance matters; manage ER complexity specific to GTM— including commission and credit disputes, territory and account conflicts, top-performer behavior issues, and expense and entertainment concerns.
Manage compliance and mitigate risk. Ensure multi-state employment law compliance, exempt/non-exempt classification for GTM roles, pay transparency requirements, restrictive covenant practices, and clean documentation for separations and RIFs. Partner with Legal on escalated matters.

Change Management at Scale

Lead the people side of GTM change. Reorganizations, segment and territory redesigns, motion shifts (product-led to sales-led, SMB to enterprise, new-logo to expansion), leadership transitions, new market entry, integrations, and reductions.
Communicate change credibly. Build the narrative, sequencing, and manager talking points that let change land well with a highly networked, highly vocal GTM population.
Design the people infrastructure that lets us grow. Build processes that are lightweight enough for today and durable enough for a company two or three times our size — and revisit them as we grow.

What You Bring

Required

10+ years of progressive HR/People experience, including 4+ years as a senior HRBP or People Partner directly supporting go-to-market functions — Sales, Customer Success, and/or Marketing.
Demonstrated experience supporting executive-level leaders (VP/CRO/CMO/Head-of-level) as a credible peer and advisor, including the ability to influence, push back, and hold a position under pressure.
Deep working knowledge of GTM compensation: quota and OTE design, pay mix, accelerators, draws, and retention/expansion-linked incentives for post-sale roles.
Hands-on experience with organizational design, leveling, and job architecture, and workforce/capacity planning in a quota-carrying environment.
Strong employee relations judgment, including independently conducting sensitive investigations and advising on complex, escalated matters.
Fluency with people data — able to build the analysis yourself, interpret it honestly, and use it to drive a decision. Comfortable in spreadsheets and HR systems; comfortable being questioned on your numbers.
A first-principles problem solver: you reason from the actual business problem and available evidence rather than from precedent or borrowed playbooks, and you can explain your reasoning.
Experience in a high-growth technology company, with the operating instincts that come with it — pace over perfection, comfort with ambiguity, willingness to do the work yourself.
Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to earn trust quickly across executives, managers, and individual contributors.
Working knowledge of multi-state US employment law and compliance obligations.
Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred

Experience scaling a GTM organization through a significant growth stage (for example, doubling revenue or GTM headcount).
Exposure to B2B SaaS, hardware-plus-software, or subscription business models and their revenue metrics (ARR, NRR, GRR, CAC payback, magic number).
Experience partnering with Sales Ops, CS Ops, RevOps, and Finance on planning and incentive design.

How You’ll Work Here

You go find the answer. You are more likely to open the dashboard, sit in the pipeline review, or talk to eight reps than to wait for someone to bring you a brief.
You have a point of view and hold it lightly. You come with a recommendation and change it when the evidence changes.
You are direct. You give leaders and managers honest feedback early, in plain language.
You own outcomes, not process. You are measured by what has improved in the business.
You build for scale but ship for now. You choose the version that works this quarter and can grow.

Location & Working Model

This role is based in our Raleigh, NC, headquarters and is an in-office position, requiring 5 days per week on-site with flexibility as needed. We operate a high-in-office culture by design: this role depends on rapid, deep relationship building, hallway context, and a bias to action that is difficult to replicate remotely.

Why this role?

Real scope and real influence. A single senior seat over the entire revenue organization, with a direct line to three executive leaders and a visible impact on company performance.
Build, don’t maintain. You will design the GTM people infrastructure — leveling, comp architecture, performance rhythm, capacity planning — rather than administer someone else’s.
A culture that rewards judgment and pace. We value pace over perfection and have a genuine bias toward action, learning, and iteration. Good ideas move quickly here.
Growth. A high-growth technology company with room for this role to expand in scope as the business scales.

About Relay | Culture, Benefits & Perks

Our culture hinges on Relayers getting LIT up in an environment that fosters Learning, Impact, and Teamwork, where we CHASE the best work of our lives. We call this BWIML (Best Work In My Life).

At Relay, we offer:

100% Paid Insurance: Health, Dental, Vision, Long/Short Term Disability, and Life Insurance for you and your dependents
Generous Paid Time Off
401(k) Savings Plan + Company Match
Baby Cash Reward + Paid Parental Leave
Wellness Perks: A world-class onsite fitness center with instructor-led classes, plus tennis, basketball, pickleball, and cycling
Team Events & Culture: From company celebrations to team outings, we work hard and have fun doing it
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