Senior HR Manager

Department:

Human Resources

Reports To:

Director of Human Resources

FLSA Status:

Exempt

Employment Type:

Full-Time, Regular

Location:

455 Franklin Street, San Francisco, CA 94102 (hybrid: in-office minimum 3x a week)

San Francisco Ballet embodies the spirit of its city: innovative, forward-thinking, and unafraid to challenge convention. Founded in 1933, the company has long understood that ballet's power lies in its ability to blend timeless tradition with modern relevance — from presenting America's first full-length productions of Nutcracker and Swan Lake to consistently pushing the boundaries of contemporary choreography. Under the artistic direction of Tamara Rojo and executive leadership of Branislav Henselmann, SF Ballet is leading boldly into a new era, where artistic vision, organizational momentum, and civic energy converge to create a genuinely rare moment of opportunity. The company is reimagining what ballet can be, and making the case that its most compelling chapter is still ahead.

The Senior HR Manager is a key member of San Francisco Ballet’s Human Resources team and a close partner to the Director of Human Resources. This is a highly visible, hands-on role for an experienced HR professional who enjoys building relationships, solving complex people challenges, and strengthening the systems and practices that support a healthy workplace.

With employee experience and relations as a core area of responsibility, the Senior HR Manager provides thoughtful guidance to employees and managers, leads investigations and performance matters, and helps address concerns early through coaching and partnership. The role also has meaningful ownership across talent acquisition, onboarding, performance management, HR systems, and learning and development, and serve as a trusted resource across the organization. San Francisco Ballet is a complex and dynamic workplace that includes artists, administrators, faculty, production professionals, and employees represented by seven bargaining units.

Success in this role requires sound judgment, strong HR fundamentals, curiosity, and the ability to build trust across very different teams and perspectives. This is an opportunity to help shape how HR supports the organization during an important period of evolution. One that requires pairing strong, consistent HR practices with a relationship-driven approach to culture change and creating improvements that make the employee experience stronger over time.

Employee Experience and Relations

• Build trusted, day to day relationships with managers and employees so small concerns surface early and get resolved through coaching before they need to become formal matters.

• Own Employee Relations caseload: investigations (harassment, discrimination, retaliation, and conduct matters), coaching and performance management. Escalating high-risk or sensitive matters to the Director of HR and/or counsel with a clear risk assessment.
• Track ER trends, conduct root cause analysis, and recommend proactive fixes (training, coaching, policy changes) rather than treating each case in isolation. Turning casework into stronger, healthier teams over time.
• Serve as mentor and escalation point for other HR team members on ER questions, case handling, and conflict resolution.
• Partner with Director of HR on the organization's employee experience strategy, including engagement (pulse) surveys, recognition programs, and onboarding/offboarding touchpoints that shape how staff experience the employee lifecycle.
• Lead employee experience initiatives such as stay interviews, exit interview analysis, and culture check-ins to complement pulse survey data with qualitative insight

Policy & Compliance

• Own HR policy maintenance: audit policies against current federal/California/SF law, draft and implement updates (including those arising from ER lessons learned), and monitor legislative developments that affect SFB.
• Co-Chair the Safety Committee and maintain the Injury and Illness Prevention Program (IIPP), ensuring ongoing compliance with Cal/OSHA requirements and driving timely identification, reporting, and resolution of workplace hazards.
• Support and lead the building, maintenance and accessibility of employee handbook.

Talent, Onboarding & Performance

• Own full-cycle recruitment and the new hire onboarding experience (first-day logistics, orientation, 30/60/90-day check-ins) for assigned departments.
• Administer the performance management cycle (PPR) and coach managers on proactive performance conversations, before issues escalate to formal ER matters.

Systems & Learning

• Own Paycom at the configuration/optimization layer (workflows, modules, automation, vendor relationship)
• Lead administrator of the JIRA HR Hub, partnering with HR Generalists who own day-to-day data transactions.
• Own learning & development coordination. Identifying training needs and facilitating manager-development and compliance trainings (including via the Paycom LMS).
• Identify areas for optimization while shepherding us into a single source of truth for staff data across HR systems

Team Leadership

• Provide day to day guidance to other HR team members and serve as backup to the Director of Human Resources on designated matters, including sensitive ER escalations in the Director's absence.
• Serve as a relationship builder and go to thought partner for staff across the organization on HR and employee relations questions.

The strongest candidates will recognize themselves in most of the following:

• Confident managing a varied ER caseload and knowing when to escalate.
• Comfortable moving across very different populations in the same day from union talent, School faculty, senior administrator, without losing consistency.
• Produces clear, thoughtful documentation and well-supported findings.
• Exercises excellent judgment and discretion with sensitive and confidential matters.
• Energized by improving processes and systems
• Pairs strong, disciplined HR practices with an emergent, relationship-driven approach to culture change. Knowing real change happens through both together over time.
• Has spent time in HR generalist-type roles and brings that ground-level experience together with disciplined practices in service of bigger-picture goals.

Required

• 5-7+ years of progressive HR experience with substantial, hands-on employee relations casework, including independently leading investigations.
• Experience managing PIPs, disciplinary processes, and separations.
• Strong knowledge of federal, California, and San Francisco employment law (FEHA, ADA/FEHA interactive process, PAGA, wage-and-hour) as applied to ER work.
• Exceptional judgment, discretion, and written communication skills; ability to manage a high-volume caseload and keep stakeholders informed without prompting.
• Clear understanding of the importance of when to use plain language and technical writing in communications.
• Strong interpersonal skills. Able to build trust and rapport quickly with employees, managers, and executives across a wide range of personalities and situations.

• Strong grounding in HR law and best practices, paired with the creativity to think outside the box and keep moving goals forward within real-world constraints.

Preferred

• Experience partnering with leadership on culture or engagement work.

• Comfort working within a union environment is a plus. SFB operates under seven different bargaining units, and familiarity with grievance handling and just-cause/progressive-discipline standards under a CBA is a strong asset.
• PHR/SPHR or SHRM-CP/SHRM-SCP certification; prior experience mentoring or supervising an HR team; nonprofit or arts-sector experience.
• Experience configuring/administering Paycom (or similar HRIS), JIRA (or similar ticketing platform), and a learning management system.
• Workman’s Comp administration experience
• Comfortable facilitating trainings and using AI tools in daily HR work, in line with SFB's data privacy and confidentiality practices.
• Demonstrated ability to build trust and relationships across an organization, and to translate that trust into real, lasting culture change over time.

Salary range: $100,000–$125,000, commensurate with experience. San Francisco Ballet offers a competitive benefits package including health coverage, retirement plan participation, and paid time off.

Application Procedure

We prefer you apply online

NO CALLS, PLEASE

San Francisco Ballet Association is an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to employing a diverse staff.
Qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records will be considered for the position in accordance with the Fair Chance Ordinance (FCO).