People Partner Lead

Summary

Join Samsara as a Senior People Partner for R&D and become a strategic force in designing and scaling high-performing teams across our Product, Platform, and AI engineering organizations. Drive innovation through organizational design, foster an elite engineering and product culture, and enable teams to move fast. Partner closely with engineering and product leaders to design organizations that prioritize small, autonomous, high-impact teams. This is a remote position open to US-based candidates, offering a clear path to leading the entire R&D People Partner function. You will impact industries that run our world and have the opportunity for rapid career development within a hyper-growth environment. This role requires proven experience driving fast-paced innovation and strong influence and communication skills.

Requirements

• Proven Experience Driving Fast-Paced Innovation: You’ve designed org structures that enable teams to ship quickly while maintaining execution discipline
• 8+ years of People Partner experience, with at least 5 years supporting R&D, product, AI, or engineering teams in high-growth, fast-paced environments
• Influence & Communication: You are a trusted advisor to executives and know how to navigate complex org dynamics while driving decisive action
• Data-Driven Decision Making: You can translate people metrics into strategic insights that directly impact speed, execution, and long-term team success
• Ownership Mentality: You operate with a founder mindset, embracing ambiguity and solving problems proactively

Responsibilities

• Architect small, high-performing teams that can move fast and iterate quickly while maintaining operational excellence
• Help leaders design orgs that scale without bureaucracy, ensuring the company remains as agile as a startup even as we grow
• Identify bottlenecks, silos, and inefficiencies, restructuring teams proactively to maximize velocity and impact
• Act as the most senior individual contributor in the North America R&D People Partner function, reporting directly to senior leadership with a path to owning the R&D People Partner org
• Work alongside senior engineering, AI, and platform leaders to anticipate talent needs and build an org structure that enables sustained innovation
• Be a key voice in shaping the talent strategy for next-gen AI, platform, and product engineering teams
• Ensure teams maintain an innovation mindset while reinforcing best practices for execution, delivery, and accountability
• Implement scalable leadership development programs, ensuring that Samsara continues to produce world-class product and engineering leaders from within
• Work with senior leaders to drive a culture of continuous feedback and radical candor, enabling top talent to reach their full potential
• Leverage people analytics to inform org design, team health, and leadership effectiveness
• Provide insights that help leaders make proactive decisions on hiring, retention, and performance before challenges emerge
• Drive continuous improvement by measuring how team structure impacts speed, execution, and innovation cycles
• Champion, role model, and embed Samsara’s cultural principles (Focus on Customer Success, Build for the Long Term, Adopt a Growth Mindset, Be Inclusive, Win as a Team) as we scale globally and across new offices

Benefits

• Competitive total compensation package
• Employee-led remote and flexible working
• Health benefits
• Samsara for Good charity fund