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This is a remote position.
HR Business Partner (HRBP)
Remote (India) | Full-time
Also searched as: Senior HR Business Partner, HRBP, HR Manager, Deputy Manager - HR
Could you build the systems for India's people function while taking on the hardest matters yourself?
On a typical day you might coach a manager through a performance conversation they have been putting off in the morning, moderate ratings for two teams after lunch, and close a leaver's paperwork with the payroll bureau by day's end.
About Contour
Today we operate across three brands with more than 10,000 students and about 500 team members across Australia and India. The India team, which falls under the Global Enablement and Support pillar, is the global capability centre (GCC) Contour is building: it runs delivery, automation, people, and operations for the whole organisation.
The GCC is growing faster than the people function behind it. This is the seat that closes that gap.
About This Role
You are the first dedicated people owner for Contour in India: employee relations, exits, performance, pay reviews, compliance, attrition and engagement.
You calibrate across the org and design the process underneath, and you support line managers, who rate their own people and hold the hard conversations themselves. The VP of Global Enablement and Support approves anything where pay or level attaches, and owns org design, headcount and band architecture. The Head of People and Culture in Australia sets the global standard you localise. Everything else is yours.
There is no central HR desk. You work directly with the pod leads, the managers who run each team. This is not a back-office function in a silo: you and the Talent Acquisition Lead operate as one.
Two things separate a strong hire here from a competent one. First, you can take a termination through unsupervised, and the file stands up without anyone checking it. Second, you hold a position when your approver pushes back, and change it when they are right.
You lead the People team, including a coordinator who looks after HRIS hygiene, onboarding and offboarding, bureau liaison and audit records. We want a player-coach who leads by example, not someone who only directs. You can do whatever you delegate, and you will do parts of it yourself, more in some weeks than others, whether that's a grievance, a POSH inquiry or a termination. Contour is scaling and hires for the long term: the scope of this seat grows with the platform, and what you deliver decides how fast.
Nobody here yet answers why people leave, what that costs, or whether the paperwork behind a disciplinary case would survive scrutiny.
Where the work lives
The HRIS: Rippling and Zoho People are the options, and you have a say in the choice.
The payroll bureau: an external firm handles payroll and statutory returns. The filing is theirs; the exposure stays with you.
What You Will Do
Take over employee relations once they turn formal: Investigations, grievances, conflict and improvement plans. Managers handle the everyday issues, coached by you; you decide when that line is crossed.
Run exits: Paperwork, statutory liabilities, full and final settlement, the record. The manager builds the case and delivers the news; you handle the rest.
Operate the review cycle: Design the mechanics, promotions against the career ladder included, then moderate so a rating means the same thing whichever manager gives it.
Lead pay reviews: Apply the bands, hold managers to a defensible position within them, and supply the India market data that band-setting depends on.
Write the policies people work by: Build and maintain the India employee handbook, from leave and holidays to probation and notice, and the employment contracts, fixed-term ones for interns included. Shape the onboarding that introduces them, and close gaps against the Labour Codes, POSH and the Internal Committee, and state registrations before an auditor finds them.
Make this a place people want to stay: Lead engagement surveys with action plans the managers carry and events people look forward to, and track why people leave and what it costs.
Coach your people directly: Give each person structured 1:1s and performance conversations, keep routine work from swallowing the judgement calls, and make sure they know why it matters.
Plan the next hire: As volume rises, decide what the next role should be and hire for it.
If a better tool exists for something we are doing manually, make the case and we will back it.
What You Need
We weigh what you have built and run more than the years on your CV. You should be able to point to:
An India termination you handled yourself: the letters, the liabilities, the settlement and a file that survives legal reading.
A contested investigation or grievance where your process held.
A calibration across several managers where you moved one off a rating they were attached to.
A policy you wrote and rolled out that people actually follow.
An engagement project or event you ran that left people more energised and engaged, and how you knew it worked.
A call you stood behind against someone senior and were right about, and one where you were wrong and changed it.
Someone you managed directly, with the coaching record to show for it, even if it was one coordinator or analyst.
You also know the Labour Codes, POSH and statutory benefits (PF, ESI, gratuity, professional tax) well enough to audit where we stand and fix what is missing, even if you have not set up a committee.
If you have delivered these, or can show us how you would here, apply. If you enjoy doing the work yourself, this seat will suit you; if your recent years have mostly been signing off other people's work, it may feel small.
Nice to Have
A compensation round run inside fixed ranges, with market data you defended to a sceptical approver.
GCC or multi-country HR experience.
Education or EdTech experience.
The Kind of People Who Thrive Here
Contour started in 2020 as one classroom in a university library. In 2022 three full-time team members ran the business on Monday.com. Today we are about 500 people across Australia and India, and much of what we run was built by someone who noticed it was missing.
The work matters. More than 10,000 students rely on what we build, from the booklets they study from to the systems their families pay through. The people who do well here care about that and want to know their work made a difference to those students.
They own their work end to end, start things without being asked, and finish what they commit to. They tell the truth early, including when something is off and what they have already tried, and write decisions down so the next person can pick them up. They give direct feedback and ask for it back.
The pace is fast. Small problems are fixed the same week, bigger ones within the six-week cycle, and whoever spots the problem usually gets to lead the fix. We keep refining how we work, and you are expected to improve the processes you own.
We hire on what you have built and run yourself, and growth works the same way. Time with us counts, but scope, title and pay move with what you deliver and how much you raise the bar on what you own.
What Good Looks Like
Managers get stronger, not dependent: they deliver their own difficult news, and bring you in earlier each time.
Nothing arrives as a surprise: compliance gaps, attrition patterns and flight risks surface from you before they surface as an event.
Satisfaction you can see: survey scores rise from one round to the next, and fewer of the people you most want to keep choose to go.
Fully remote, anywhere in India, and comfortable working across the India and Australia time difference, with occasional travel. Compensation is competitive and benchmarked to the role and your experience; we discuss it openly early in the process.
Ready to build the people function India has never had? Apply.
