The Principal, Talent Management is a senior individual contributor who designs, leads, and scales enterprise-wide talent management strategies and programs. This role operates with significant autonomy in highly ambiguous environments, driving talent management initiatives across multiple business units or geographies. The Principal, Talent Management serves as a recognized subject-matter expert and trusted advisor to senior leaders (Director and VP level), shaping the talent agenda and influencing long-term workforce strategy.
Key job responsibilities
• Enterprise Talent Strategy: Design and own the end-to-end talent management strategy for the enterprise, including talent evaluation, high-potential identification and retention, performance management and AI-enhanced talent experiences.
• Organizational Health & Insights: Leverage data and analytics to diagnose organizational health trends, identify talent risks, and develop proactive interventions. Translate complex talent data into actionable insights for senior leadership.
• Talent Evaluation & Calibration: Design talent evaluation and calibration processes, ensuring consistency, fairness, and alignment with role guidelines and leadership principles.
• Growth & Development: Architect and implement scalable growth & development programs that accelerate the growth of high-value talent and address capability gaps across the organization.
• Cross-Functional Influence: Drive alignment and adoption of talent management best practices across organizations and geographies. Build consensus among diverse stakeholders on complex, ambiguous talent challenges.
• Mechanisms & Scalability: Create scalable mechanisms, tools, and frameworks that raise the bar on talent management practices and can be adopted broadly across the company.
• Change Management: Lead change management efforts related to talent programs, ensuring effective communication, stakeholder engagement, and adoption at scale.
What You'll Do
You'll own the full lifecycle of programs that have considerable impact across multiple Amazon organizations. That means defining the mission and vision, aligning strategy with senior leaders, building go-to-market and change management plans, and driving execution across teams that don't report to you.
You'll develop KPI frameworks that give leadership real visibility into performance, and you'll use data to tell the story of what's working and where to push harder.
You'll be the connective tissue between product, design, technical, and business teams - identifying gaps before they become failures, sourcing and coordinating resources across organizations, and proactively mitigating risks that others haven't spotted yet. When a problem is ambiguous, you'll define it. When a path forward isn't clear, you'll build one.
About the team
Why This Role
This isn't program management in a support function. You'll operate at the intersection of people strategy and technology, working on initiatives that directly influence how Amazon identifies, develops, and retains talent at unprecedented scale. The stakeholders are senior, the problems are genuinely hard, and the work ships to an audience of hundreds of thousands. If you want your programs to be felt across an entire company - not just tracked in a status report - this is the role.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent in a relevant field such as Organizational Development, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, Human Resources Management or Development, business, or similar related discipline
- Can work proactively and independently, meet deadlines, and deliver on projects and tasks
- Experience in verbal and written communication for executive level leaders
- 10+ years of progressive experience in talent management, organizational development, HR business partnership, or a related field
- Demonstrated experience designing and implementing enterprise-wide talent management programs (e.g., talent evaluation, performance management, growth & development)
- Experience advising and influencing senior leaders (Director level and above) on talent strategy and organizational health
- Strong analytical skills with the ability to leverage data and voice of the customer to drive talent decisions and measure program effectiveness
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Experience working in a matrixed organization
- Experience in talent management, organizational network analysis, and organizational design and development
- Master's degree or advanced certification in a relevant discipline (e.g., MBA, M.S. in I/O Psychology, SHRM-SCP, or equivalent)
- Track record of building scalable talent programs that have been adopted across multiple business units or geographies
- Experience with performance management systems, competency frameworks, and assessment methodologies
- Demonstrated ability to manage through influence rather than authority, building consensus across diverse stakeholder groups
The base salary range for this position is listed below. Your Amazon package will include sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs). Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, qualifications, and location. Amazon also offers comprehensive benefits including health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line, Flexible Spending Accounts, Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage), 401(k) matching, paid time off, and parental leave. Learn more about our benefits at https://amazon.jobs/en/benefits.
USA, WA, Seattle - 149,800.00 - 202,600.00 USD annually
