Senior People Partner

Fonoa is the Tax Operating System for autonomous tax. AI that tracks every rule, acts on every obligation, and proves every decision, built on modular infrastructure. Fonoa's modules cover the full indirect tax lifecycle: tax ID validation, real-time tax determination, e-invoicing, and returns. All on one shared data model and integration, with one audit trail. Each added capability makes the others stronger. Agents monitor obligations, populate returns, catch anomalies and assemble audit packs in seconds. The system does the work. Humans make the calls. That's autonomous tax. Trusted by Canva, Netflix, Spotify, Uber, Zoom and Booking.com. Find out more: www.fonoa.com THE ROLE We're looking for a Senior People Partner to sit alongside business leaders at Fonoa and drive high performance across their teams. As Senior People Partner at Fonoa, you'll own the business-facing People relationship for a defined set of leaders and their teams. Real partnership. You'll help managers prevent problems before they escalate, move difficult situations forward when they don't, and build the frameworks that make consistency possible as the company scales. The role spans day-to-day partnering, performance, manager coaching, employee relations, onboarding, career development, culture, and engagement. You'll also provide People coverage for our US employees. The expectation is that you find the 'how' when others default to yes or no. This is a senior IC role on a small, high-calibre People team, reporting to the Chief People Officer. We're looking for commercial credibility, personal gravitas, and the breadth to operate across the full scope of a People function in a fast-scaling business. WHAT YOU'LL DO * Partner with business leaders. Be the named People partner for a defined set of leaders. First point of contact for people issues, performance conversations, team dynamics, and management challenges. Own the relationship, not just the transaction. * Drive performance and accountability. Help managers set clear expectations, have difficult conversations, and act on issues before they become crises. Coach the manager through it. Don't just advise from the side. * Own employee relations. Manage ER cases end-to-end across markets, from early intervention through to resolution. Keep things moving, keep things fair, and keep the business out of avoidable risk. * Build the people programmes. Design and run the programmes that move the business forward: onboarding, career frameworks, manager training, culture, engagement. Make them real, not decorative. * Cover the US & EU. Provide dedicated People partnering for Fonoa's US & EU employees, with working knowledge of US employment law and practices. * Shape the function. Help build what the People function looks like as Fonoa scales, and operate as the partner business leaders bring their hardest problems to. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR * Commercial credibility and gravitas. You can hold your own with a CRO, CPO, or founder. You speak the language of the business (performance, output, growth, risk), not the language of HR policy. You've pushed back on a senior leader and can describe specifically what happened. * High-growth experience. You've operated in a scaling company where the People function was being built rather than maintained. * A 'how, not no' instinct. When the easy answer is yes or no, you look for the third option. You can walk through a specific example where you helped a leader reach a legitimate outcome through a route they hadn't considered. * Performance and ER in practice. You've owned performance situations and employee relations cases end-to-end, not just advised on them. You can describe how you support the manager, keep momentum, and bring cases to resolution across multiple jurisdictions. * Programme design from scratch. You've built at least one people programme from a blank page, not inherited and maintained one. You can describe the problem, the design, the buy-in, and what changed. * Breadth across the People function. Meaningful work across at least two of: performance frameworks, career development, L&D, onboarding, or culture programmes. Range, not depth in one specialism. * Strong context-switching. You can manage active situations across multiple teams without dropping things, with a clear method for triaging what's urgent, what's important, and what can wait. * Working knowledge of US and UK/EU employment. Enough to be the first point of contact for employees and managers across markets without escalating every question to legal. As part of the recruitment process at Fonoa, we process your personal data in accordance with our Privacy Notice for Job Applicants. This notice explains how and why your data is collected and used, and how you can contact us if you have any concerns.

About us We are champions of rail, inspired to build a greener, more sustainable future of travel. Trainline enables millions of travellers to find and book the best value tickets across carriers, fares, and journey options through our highly rated mobile app, website, and B2B partner channels.  Great journeys start with Trainline 🚄  Now Europe’s number 1 downloaded rail app, with over 135 million monthly visits and £6.3 billion in annual ticket sales, we collaborate with 270+ rail and coach companies in over 40 countries. We want to create a world where travel is as simple, seamless, eco-friendly and affordable as it should be.  Today, we're a FTSE 250 company driven by our incredible team of over 1,000 Trainliners from 50+ nationalities, based across London, Paris, Barcelona, Milan, Edinburgh and Madrid. With our focus on growth in the UK and Europe, now is the perfect time to join us on this high-speed journey.  INTRODUCING THE TRAINLINE PEOPLE TEAM 👋 At Trainline, our People team plays a vital role in enabling our business and colleagues to thrive through growth, innovation and transformation. As we continue to evolve our People operating model, we're creating more opportunities for our People Partners to focus on strategic partnership, helping leaders build high-performing, future-ready teams. This role sits at the heart of that journey, partnering with our Technology and Data organisation as it navigates organisational transformation, leadership capability, workforce planning and the opportunities presented by AI. As the Senior People Partner, you'll partner with senior Technology and Data leaders to shape and deliver people strategies that enable business performance. While the role currently combines strategic partnership with operational People support, you'll play a key role in helping evolve how the wider People Partnering team operates over the coming months. Working closely with leaders and colleagues across the People function, you'll help build a more proactive, insight-led approach to partnering while supporting the business through change and embedding new ways of working. IN THIS ROLE AS THE SENIOR PEOPLE PARTNER, YOU WILL...🚄 * Partner with senior Technology and Data leaders to develop and deliver people plans that align with business priorities, using workforce data, organisational insights and external trends to shape decisions and deliver measurable business impact. * Build trusted relationships with leaders at all levels, coaching and influencing them on organisational effectiveness, leadership capability, performance, talent and employee engagement. * Lead and support organisational design, restructures and business transformation initiatives, including collective consultation where appropriate, ensuring change is delivered thoughtfully, consistently and in line with employment legislation. * Champion a proactive approach to people partnering by identifying opportunities through employee health metrics, engagement insights, workforce data and industry trends before issues arise. * Support the development of a high-performance culture by coaching leaders through performance management, calibration, capability development and challenging conversations with confidence and fairness. * Drive continuous improvement across the People function by identifying opportunities to simplify processes, improve workflows and embrace AI and automation to create greater efficiency and enable more strategic partnering. * Collaborate closely with Talent Acquisition, Reward, Learning, People Operations and Legal to deliver integrated people solutions that support both immediate priorities and longer-term organisational goals. * Contribute to the evolution of the wider People Partnering team by sharing best practice, supporting new ways of working and helping build a more strategic, commercially focused partnering model across the function. WE'D LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU IF YOU HAVE...🔍 * Significant experience as a People Partner supporting Technology, Engineering or Data organisations, with a track record of partnering with Director-level leaders to deliver strategic people outcomes. * Strong experience leading or supporting organisational change, including organisational design, restructures, change management and, ideally, collective consultation. * A proactive and commercially minded approach, using people data, workforce insights and business context to identify opportunities, shape people strategies and influence business decisions. * Excellent relationship-building and stakeholder management skills, with the confidence to coach, challenge and influence senior leaders while adapting your style to different audiences. * A strong generalist People partnering background, including employee relations and employment law, with the ability to balance operational priorities alongside strategic business partnering. * Experience improving People processes, operating models or ways of working, with curiosity about how AI and emerging technologies can enhance the employee experience and the effectiveness of the People function. * A collaborative approach, with experience working across Centres of Excellence and People teams to deliver joined-up, business-focused solutions. * A growth mindset and enthusiasm for helping shape the future of People Partnering, supporting colleagues through change and contributing to the ongoing development of the wider People team. More information: Enjoy fantastic perks like private healthcare & dental insurance, a generous work from abroad policy, 2-for-1 share purchase plans, an EV Scheme to further reduce carbon emissions, extra festive time off, and excellent family-friendly benefits.  We prioritise career growth with clear career paths, transparent pay bands, personal learning budgets, and regular learning days. Jump on board and supercharge your career from day one!  We're operating a hybrid model and ask that Trainliners work from the office a minimum of 60% of their time over a 12-week period. We also have a 28-day Work from Abroad policy. Our values represent the things that matter most to us and what we live and breathe everyday, in everything we do:  * 💭 Think Big - We're building the future of rail  * ✔️ Own It - We focus on every customer, partner and journey  * 🤝  Travel Together - We're one team  * ♻️ Do Good - We make a positive impact  We know that having a diverse team makes us better and helps us succeed. And we mean all forms of diversity - gender, ethnicity, sexuality, disability, nationality and diversity of thought. That's why we're committed to creating inclusive places to work, where everyone belongs and differences are valued and celebrated. Interested in finding out more about what it's like to work at Trainline? Why not check us out on LinkedIn, Instagram and Glassdoor!