Director of Human Resources

Reports to: Chief Operating Officer

Direct Reports: HR Operations Manager

Location: Hybrid (based in an area of current restaurant concentration or projected growth, including Massachusetts, Northern Virginia, Central NJ, or Charlotte, NC) with an expectation of being in the Home Office a minimum of 3 days/month, with regular travel across the Burtons Grill & Bar and Red Heat restaurant portfolio

FLSA Status: Exempt, full-time

Role Description

The Director of Human Resources is the senior HR leader at Burtons Grill & Bar and Red Heat American Tavern and is accountable for the culture, people development, and compliance integrity of the organization across both brands. This role owns HR as one integrated discipline: the culture and development work that make Burtons a place people choose to build a career, and the systems and processes that keep the company legally sound and audit-ready. 

The Director is expected to effectively balance knowledge and application of employment law and HR processes with the understanding that a great place to work is a business strategy that fuels our growth. Further, the Director is expected to effectively navigate the day-to-day challenge of balancing culture and compliance, understanding that success means neither is subordinate to the other.

The Director reports to the Chief Operating Officer and partners closely with the Operations, Finance, Culinary and Beverage, IT, Marketing, and Training & Development teams to ensure HR strategy is lived at the restaurant level, not just administered from above. The Director leads the HR team and oversees the Payroll and Benefits function for Burtons and Red Heat.

How This Role Relates to the HR Operations Manager

The HR Operations Manager owns day-to-day execution of HR: payroll and benefits administration, leave, onboarding and offboarding, HRIS records, and first-line employee relations. The Director owns the standard, the judgment, and the direction: setting how HR work is done, making the high-risk calls, building HR capability in the field, and leading culture and engagement strategy. The Director oversees administration rather than running it, and is measured on whether HR works across both brands, not on how much of it the Director personally handles.

Leadership Expectations

The Director of Human Resources is expected to:

• Champion culture, belonging, and people development as business strategy, not initiative
• Hold practitioner-level command of HR compliance (e.g., wage-and-hour, leave, EEO/EEOC, ADA, documentation, and termination risk) in service of restaurant operations and building a great place to work
• Be credible in restaurants, understanding the operational reality of running a consistent standard across many locations and shifts
• Build HR systems that hold up at scale across both brands without becoming bureaucratic
• Translate employment-law requirements into practical, restaurant-usable process
• Partner effectively up, down, and across the organization, with RVPs and GMs in the field and with the COO at the leadership table
• Balance rigor and humanity, protecting the business while genuinely protecting the people in it

Leading the HR Function

The Director leads HR as a function, not a set of tasks, setting the priorities, standards, and decision rights that let the work hold up as the portfolio grows.

Culture, Belonging & Employee Experience

The Director owns the employee experience strategy across both brands, treating engagement and retention as measurable outcomes of a system rather than a byproduct of individual GMs.

HR Compliance & Risk Management

The Director owns the HR compliance standard across both brands and oversees its execution, ensuring every process is current, complete, and audit-ready at all times.

People Development & Talent Pipeline

The Director partners closely with the Training & Development team to ensure HR strategy and people-development programming reinforce one another, and supports the pipeline work that sits alongside training.

Compensation & Total Rewards Administration

The Director administers a compensation strategy that is competitive, internally equitable, and financially sustainable across a multi-unit, multi-brand portfolio.

Payroll & Benefits Oversight

The Director oversees payroll and benefits for Burtons and Red Heat in partnership with the VP of Finance and the COO. The HR Operations Manager administers both functions day-to-day; the Director ensures they are accurate, compliant, and run smoothly for employees.

Organizational Relationships

• Reports to the Chief Operating Officer
• Leads the HR team, including the HR Operations Manager
• Partners with the Chief Executive Officer and senior leadership team
• Partners with Regional Vice Presidents and General Managers across both brands
• Partners closely with the Director of Training and the Training & Development team
• Oversees Payroll and Benefits in close partnership with the VP of Finance and COO

At Burtons, we believe a great place to work is a business strategy, not a culture initiative, and that the discipline of HR compliance and the warmth of a genuinely great culture are not in tension. The Director of Human Resources is the standard-bearer for that belief.

The opportunity in this role is to build an HR function that protects the business and grows the people in it, in equal measure: one that is trusted by RVPs and GMs in the field because it is credible, practical, and genuinely on their side.

• 7+ years of progressive HR leadership experience, ideally within multi-unit restaurant, hospitality, or retail operations
• Experience leading and developing HR staff, including setting standards and holding others accountable for HR execution
• Demonstrated ownership of both culture-building or people-development work and compliance-heavy HR functions
• Experience administering compensation programs within a multi-unit organization
• Direct restaurant or multi-unit hospitality experience, and genuine comfort spending time in restaurants
• PHR/SPHR or SHRM-CP/SCP certification preferred; Bachelor’s degree in HR, Business, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
• Excellent judgment under pressure, high discretion with sensitive information, and the communication range to work equally well with hourly employees, GMs, and senior leadership