Lead - Talent Partner

Role: Lead - Talent Partner

Location: IBC Knowledge Park, Bengaluru

Reporting to: Head – Talent Partnering (Business/ Design/ Corporate/ Digital Operations \& Engineering)

Team name: People Operations \& Strategy

About The Team And The Role

The People Operations \& Strategy team at Ather is at the forefront of the company’s mission to electrify the future, supporting rapid scaling across R\&D, manufacturing, and global expansion. The team focuses on delivering an incredible experience for every team member by driving organizational design, culture building, and high-impact people initiatives.

As a Lead - Talent Partner, you will play a dual role: acting as a strategic people manager guiding other Talent Partners, while simultaneously roll-up-your-sleeves to execute end-to-end HR business partnering for specific, high-impact business verticals. You will serve as the primary, trusted HR advisor to leadership team members for their respective verticals. This role demands a balance of high-level strategic workforce planning—covering everything from annual budgeting to org structuring—and a relentless, hands-on execution mindset to bring those strategies to life.

Responsibilities

End-to-End Strategic Partnering \& Execution

• Leadership Advisory: Act as the dedicated HR Business Partner for leadership team members across multiple verticals, aligning people strategies directly with business goals.
• Workforce \& Budget Planning: Lead annual headcount budget planning, manage people-related costs, and build frameworks for future talent needs.
• Cross-functional collaboration: Partner closely with the various Centers of Competence within the POPS vertical to ensure the business acquires, retains and engages high-quality talent efficiently.
• Talent Acquisition Partnership: Work closely with the TA function to understand the talent landscape, help identify and evaluate talent to fit the culture at Ather.
• Organizational Design \& Metrics: Drive organization structuring, talent criticality mapping, and oversee complex pay revision and other related exercises for your verticals.
• Hands-on Delivery: Directly execute end-to-end HR deliverables for your own assigned portfolio of functions while concurrently managing the broader team.
• Part of the extended POPS Leadership team: Play an important role in shaping POPS as a function, leading strategic projects and being the voice of reason representing your business span to create inclusive solutions at the org level.
• OKR delivery: Help shape, deliver and track the execution and delivery of Talent Partnering OKRs
• P\&L Talent Partnering: Act as the Talent Partner for the horizontal P\&L structure at the organization - enabling the Business Owners to achieve their horizontal OKR targets.
• Special projects: Volunteer for working on or collaborating on special projects that may be outside the ambit of Talent Partnering - but that enables POPS to deliver value at an organizational level

Team Leadership \& People Management

• Lead and Mentor: Manage one or more Talent Partner Specialists, overseeing their day-to-day performance and enabling them to achieve their core role objectives.
• Talent Development: Direct managerial duties including continuous feedback, coaching, mentoring, and mapping out professional learning journeys for your team.
• Operational Cadence: Establish and maintain periodic review cadences to monitor work quality, align goals, and unblock challenges for your team.

Experience And Qualifications

• Education: Master’s in HR from Tier 1/2 institutes.
• Experience:10-12\+ years of progressive experience as an HR Business Partner, with a proven track record in a high-growth, fast-paced environment. Direct experience managing people or leading small HR teams is required.

Must Have Competencies

• People Management \& Leadership: Proven capability in coaching, mentoring, and driving output through direct reports.
• Strategic Workforce Planning \& Budgeting: Strong financial and commercial acumen related to cost management, talent criticality mapping, and organizational design.
• Problem Evaluation \& Ambiguity: Exceptional ability to break down complex issues, evaluate root causes, and successfully navigate highly ambiguous, evolving environments.
• Hands-on Execution Mindset: A strong bias for action; willingness and ability to dive deep into tactical delivery alongside strategic planning.
• Relationship Building \& Collaboration: Top-tier stakeholder management and cross-functional collaboration skills to influence leadership and parallel teams (like Talent Acquisition).
• Adaptability: High resilience and agility in adjusting to rapid organizational changes.
• Data \& Analytics: Proficiency in people analytics, data visualization, and leveraging dashboard data for executive decision-making.

Good to Have Competencies

• Executive presence for advising senior leadership teams on macro people trends.
• Experience designing and implementing employee engagement, assimilation, and change management frameworks.
• Expertise in managing complex grievance redressal and conflict resolution within diverse business units.

Want to know more?

At Ather, we’ve built India’s first intelligent scooter, from scratch. Based on the philosophy of clean design and smart technology, we are transforming the urban commute experience. We are expanding in India, and in the coming years, we look forward to scaling up and launching more products globally. Today, our product offerings include the Ather 450X, 450S, 450 Apex, and Rizta. Beyond the product, we are also setting up an extensive charging network and re-imagining end-to-end ownership experience. To know more, check out our Careers site and our Substack.

Be You, With Us

The Ather story doesn't write itself - our people do. We believe everyone is equal, but not the same. Diversity is our strength, and building an inclusive and equitable workplace begins with acknowledging and embracing our differences. We are an equal opportunity employer, and our team reflects a wide range of identities, experiences, and perspectives - all united by a shared passion to shape the Ather journey.