Job Description

About Lokal

Lokal is a house of focused apps built for Tier-2/3+ India, spanning categories such as edutainment and skill learning, social and community, emotional well-being, astrology, matrimony, agri consulting, jobs and advisory services. We build for Bharat with a high-ownership, fast-learning and execution-oriented culture.

Role Overview

We are looking for a Senior HR Business Partner who can work closely with Engineering leaders to build strong teams, improve organisational effectiveness and translate technology priorities into clear people actions. This is an individual contributor role with end-to-end ownership of the people agenda for the Engineering organisation.

The HRBP should understand engineering structures, critical skills, manager capability, talent quality and team health, and be comfortable moving between strategic conversations and hands-on execution. The expectation is to diagnose issues, use data, challenge constructively and drive actions to closure.

Business Partnership & Organisation Effectiveness

• Partner closely with business and functional leaders to understand priorities, operating plans and organisational challenges, and translate them into clear people priorities.
• Develop a strong understanding of team structures, roles, responsibilities, spans, layers and dependencies, and proactively identify organisation or people issues before they become escalations.
• Support organisation design, restructuring, workforce planning and role-clarity discussions as the business evolves.
• Act as a trusted advisor to leaders while maintaining independent judgement and representing both business and employee perspectives appropriately.

Talent & Workforce Planning

• Maintain a clear view of critical roles, strong performers, emerging talent, capability gaps, retention risks and succession readiness.
• Partner with leaders and Talent Acquisition on headcount planning, hiring priorities and capability requirements.
• Review whether talent is deployed effectively across teams and identify gaps that could impact business delivery.
• Drive succession and development conversations for critical roles and high-potential employees.

Performance & Talent Management

• Own the effectiveness of performance management for the assigned business, including goal setting, CFR/performance reviews, probation, promotions, performance improvement and development actions.
• Improve the quality of performance conversations rather than limiting ownership to process completion.
• Identify performance trends across teams and intervene early where expectations, accountability or manager effectiveness need improvement.
• Partner with leaders on difficult performance decisions and ensure they are objective, well documented and handled consistently.

Manager & Leadership Effectiveness

• Coach managers on feedback, performance management, difficult conversations, team dynamics, employee development and conflict resolution.
• Support first-time and developing managers to strengthen their people-management capability.
• Identify recurring leadership or managerial gaps and recommend interventions instead of solving the same issue repeatedly.
• Constructively challenge senior stakeholders where a people or organisational decision requires another perspective.

Employee Experience, Engagement & Retention

• Maintain a strong pulse of the organisation through structured employee connects, manager conversations, skip-level discussions and engagement data.
• Identify patterns behind engagement, attrition, employee concerns and organisational friction and translate them into actionable interventions.
• Build targeted retention plans for critical talent and teams where required.
• Ensure employees have clarity on expectations, growth, feedback and organisational context.

People Analytics & Organisational Insights

• Use people data - attrition, tenure, performance, engagement, hiring, headcount, span/layer, compensation and other relevant metrics - to identify trends and support business decisions.
• Go beyond reporting numbers: develop a point of view on what the data means, why something is happening and what action should follow.
• Regularly provide leaders with an objective view of organisational health, key people risks and recommended actions.

Employee Relations & Governance

• Own complex employee relations matters with maturity, confidentiality and sound judgement.
• Partner with managers on conflicts, grievances, behavioural concerns, performance issues and disciplinary matters.
• Ensure consistency with company policies, employment practices and appropriate documentation while balancing business context and employee fairness.
• Identify systemic issues behind repeated employee concerns and work toward fixing the underlying problem.

Culture & Change

• Act as a culture partner and reinforce Lokal's expected ways of working, including Ownership, Bias for Action, Get Things Done, Outcome Orientation, Growth Mindset and Context, not Control.
• Support leaders and teams through organisation changes, leadership transitions, restructuring and evolving business priorities.
• Help create an environment where expectations are clear, feedback is direct and constructive, ownership is visible and teams can operate effectively despite ambiguity.

Engineering-Specific Focus

• Understand engineering organisation structures, role expectations and skill dependencies across backend, mobile, QA, architecture, data/infra and leadership roles.
• Partner on critical-skill workforce planning, talent density, succession depth and retention of high-demand technical talent.
• Support technical career architecture, manager capability and role clarity as teams scale or reorganise.
• Work closely with Engineering leadership and Talent Acquisition on hiring quality, interview effectiveness, workforce mix and time-to-productivity.
• Use team-health, performance and attrition signals to proactively identify burnout, manager issues or capability gaps.

Requirements

• 5-8 years of progressive HR experience with meaningful HRBP ownership.
• Prior experience partnering with Engineering, Technology, SaaS or Product Engineering teams is strongly preferred.
• Ability to independently partner with senior business and functional leaders.
• Strong business acumen and curiosity - ability to understand how the business operates rather than approaching problems only through an HR lens.
• Strong understanding of organisation design, performance management, talent management, employee relations and workforce planning.
• High comfort with people data, Excel/Google Sheets and HR analytics.
• Strong judgement and ability to handle sensitive or ambiguous employee situations.
• Ability to influence without authority and constructively challenge stakeholders.
• High ownership and execution orientation - someone who follows through until the problem is resolved.
• Comfortable operating in an environment where priorities change quickly and structures continue to evolve.
• MBA/PGDM in HR preferred.