I've been in this situation where I was the "jerk".

I've only changed when I pushed for a promotion and another manager blocked it based on my behavior. When I asked people who I knew could have influenced my promotion to not happen, she just said "I blocked it because despite being by far the strongest technically, your behavior negates most, if not all, the value you can add to the team." The next week, she was going to my manager telling him he _has_ to promote me.

She's probably one of the person who had the best impact on my career so far (I was 31, so my career was closer to the beginning than to its end.

Another person that was extremely helpful in the same period of time was a coworker who joined as a tech lead 2 years before my promotion got rejected. His title was above mine even though I was technically stronger than him. He had no problem acknowledging it but also that his people skills were putting mine to shame. We had the most honest discussions about both skill-sets and while we were brutal with each other more often than not we became very good friend. I'm a bit frustrated by the fact that I don't think he got as much out of our relationship than I did, but I think it was more coming from his own shame than from my behavior.

A third was a person out of work that had been classified as "gifted" as a kid. He used to introduce me as a "genius" to people around me. I hated that but it got me thinking.

Anyway, coming from the other side, there were a couple of things driving my judgement :

- I thought I was normal and that anyone not performing to my level was just stupid. And that was making me angry towards others. The third person made me realize that maybe I wasn't normal (sorry if that sounds very pretentious), which means others are not stupid. They're actually quite smart, just not the same way I am. And my responsibility is to help them gain the insight I have, granted they want to.

- I didn't feel recognized enough. The 1st person made it brutally obvious that people saw what I could do and the only reason why they couldn't let me know what they saw was because I didn't let them. I was trying to prove myself all the time through the wrong behaviors, which just became an infinite loop of mutual deception.

- I felt lonely and frustrated. The 2nd person made me aware of my own shortcomings and also offered me both a mentor and a mentee with which I could share insight, transfer knowledge and ask questions, expecting nothing but the cold harsh truth.

If this colleague is the only thing that would drive your change of job, I would take that as a last resort option. You should not have to leave a job you are happy/content about because of a single person, so I'll take 4 out of the equation.

As said by other comments, going to HR is a waste of time. Nothing to gain there IMO. It's a human relationship issue that won't be solved by someone you've never seen around and that basically considers all of you as a liability. (Not all of HR is like that, but that's a big part of their job)

I think going to your manager is not a bad idea. if you come to him with a "I feel like" rather than a "it's his fault" approach, it should at least get him thinking. "I feel like XX is unapproachable/angry at others/aggressive all the time and I'm not sure howto approach him and make him an ally and learn from him". It's his job to advise you, to ask around and to advise this person if the feeling you have is shared by your other colleagues. If he breaks confidentiality and that backfires on you, I'd suggest changing managers. You cannot trust him with your career.

Go above your manager only if you are closer to your n+2 than to your manager. There's only so much he will be able to do without engaging your manager in the loop.

Try "confronting" him. Not so much in an aggressive way, but by using your soft skills. Praise him a bit for the things he really is better at you than you are. Learn from him. Don't hesitate to ask him for his opinion/advice/how he got there. And if you can build a connection, tell him about his own shortcomings in the areas where you are better than him. If there's no such area, use him to learn where he's better at than you are. You might be able to learn what he seems to know without having to put all the effort he put in it rather than his social skills. He will probably sound like an insufferable jerk from time to time, but what you'll get out of him might be worth thousand times the 30 minutes of jerkiness and self satisfaction you had to suffer through.

Good luck. I still feel bad about my past behavior but I've grown so much since then that I can only be thankful to all the people who had to suffered through this coming from me.