Senior HR Business Partner

About 9amHealth

9amHealth is an AI-enabled virtual specialty care platform focused on managing high-cost chronic conditions at scale. The company partners with employers, health plans, and pharmacy benefit managers to deliver comprehensive, cost-effective medical care for individuals living with obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and dyslipidemia. Members receive access to specialized clinicians, including endocrinologists, obesity medicine specialists, and clinical pharmacists, at-home lab testing, prescription medications, and lifestyle support.

9amHealth was founded in 2021 and is backed by leading healthcare investors like Define Ventures, SemperVirens, 7Wire Ventures, and The Cigna Group Ventures.

About the role

Reporting to the VP of People, this role supports leaders and employees across all functions (GTM, Product, Engineering, Clinical Care Operations, and G&A). The Senior People Partner is responsible for the hands-on work that keeps our people practices running well by owning employee relations, leave of absences, compliance, policy, benefits, and manager support. Right now, that means building the foundation, standing up consistent ER and LOA processes, and being the person managers can lean on. Over time, this role will grow into more proactive territory with more in-depth manager coaching and development, and helping elevate the capabilities of the people who are closest to our employees.

You’ll work in close partnership with the Senior People Operations Manager (who owns systems, programs, and infrastructure), and partner with brokers and benefits providers as subject matter partners. This is a role for someone who gets energy from doing the work, not just advising on it.

Success in this role looks like managers who are meaningfully more effective, employee relations cases resolved with clarity and care, and a people function that compounds in influence as the company scales.

What you’ll do

• Coach and support directors and senior managers on people challenges — team dynamics, feedback conversations, performance concerns, and difficult situations — and serve as a trusted, confidential resource they can come to before things escalate.

• Own employee relations end-to-end — intaking concerns, investigating, advising managers, documenting decisions, and resolving situations with care, consistency, and appropriate legal awareness.

• Partner with People Ops on the employee lifecycle — contributing to onboarding, offboarding, and other touchpoints where the human and operational sides of HR intersect.

• Administer leave of absence cases (FMLA, state leaves, medical, personal) from start to finish, ensuring compliance, clear communication, and a consistent employee experience.

• Build and maintain our HR policy infrastructure — authoring and updating the employee handbook, policies, and related documentation so they’re current, compliant, and written in plain language employees actually understand.

• Own benefits administration end-to-end — managing relationships with brokers and benefits providers, leading open enrollment, handling employee questions and escalations, and monitoring utilization to ensure programs are being used as intended. Major decisions and changes are made in partnership with the VP of People.

• Ensure ongoing compliance with federal, state, and local employment law across our multi-state US workforce, proactively flagging changes that affect our policies or practices and looping in Legal when needed.

• Curate and coordinate learning and development resources for managers, identifying gaps and connecting people to the right tools, training, or support until a dedicated L&D function is in place.

What you’ll need

Minimum Qualifications

• 7+ years of HR/HRBP experience, including meaningful time as a true business partner to senior leaders in a high-growth or scaling environment.

• Demonstrated ability to manage employee relations cases from intake through resolution, with clean documentation and sound judgment on when to escalate.

• Strong manager coaching instincts; able to read the room, deliver honest feedback, and build real capability in the managers you support.

• Comfort operating in ambiguity; making decisions with imperfect information, building clarity where none exists, and knowing when not to over-process.

• Experience supporting performance management, compensation, leveling, and promotion decisions with consistency and rigor.

• Effective across a distributed workforce; comfortable with building relationships, running processes, and maintaining culture across time zones and geographies (including the US and Austria).

• Working knowledge of US employment law and clear judgment on when to loop in Legal.

• Hands-on experience with leave of absence administration, including working knowledge of FMLA and state leave requirements across multiple US states.

• Experience owning or co-owning benefits programs, including open enrollment, vendor relationships, and employee-facing communication.

• Comfort writing and maintaining HR policies and employee handbooks, with attention to both legal compliance and readability.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in healthcare, digital health, or another clinical/regulated environment.

• Familiarity with Rippling or comparable HRIS platform.

• Experience supporting both a US headquarters and an international office, with awareness of how cross-jurisdictional complexity shows up in day-to-day HR work.

• Exposure to manager coaching or facilitated learning programs, even informally.

• Comfort with modern AI-assisted workflows — you actively use tools to speed up drafting, prep, and analysis, and you have a clear sense of where human judgment still needs to come first, especially in sensitive HR contexts.

• Experience supporting both a US headquarters and an international office (European context a strong plus).

What you can expect at 9amHealth

At 9amHealth, you'll join the exciting environment of a startup with the stability of highly experienced founders that have successfully built a business from scratch. We foster a collaborative learning mindset and a passion for improvement. You'll work with a brand-new product alongside a small, flexible team of people eager to shape technology, infrastructure, and culture.

Our team members are spread across the globe, with physical sites in San Diego, California, and Vienna, Austria, but we value your culture regardless of where you work.

We offer a comprehensive benefits package, including health, dental, and vision insurance, along with flexible PTO and work from home options. We provide a professional development budget and support continuing education, empowering our team to grow alongside the company. Team members have the opportunity to make a meaningful impact on chronic disease management and patient outcomes while contributing to a collaborative, mission driven culture focused on improving healthcare accessibility and affordability.

Our commitment to diversity and inclusion

Diabetes disproportionately impacts BIPOC (black, indigenous, and people of color) communities. We are committed to creating a workforce that reflects our patients and creating a positive healthcare experience for them. We welcome applications from people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, people with disabilities, members of ethnic minorities, and foreign born residents.