Albany International is seeking a Senior Talent Acquisition Programs & Systems Specialist to lead two connected enterprise portfolios: talent acquisition systems and process stewardship, and University Relations. This senior individual contributor will combine recruiting expertise, systems thinking, program management, and external partnership leadership to create scalable talent practices across our global organization.
The first major priority is leading the talent acquisition functional work for Albany's transition from its current ATS to SmartRecruiters, go live is planned for January 2028. Following the launch, this role will steward the recruiting processes supported by SmartRecruiters and lead the Talent Acquisition and University Relations strategies, including program infrastructure for internships, campus engagement, co-ops, apprenticeships, and technical-school partnerships.
Reports to: Director, Talent Management |
Level: Senior individual contributor
What you will doTalent acquisition systems and process leadership- Continuously assess recruiting practices, processes, handoffs, tools, and local variations to improve the end-to-end experience from requisition through hire.
- Engage global operational and HR leaders to understand business needs, surface regional and functional considerations, and translate priorities and user feedback into clear process maps, requirements, field definitions, decision logs, configuration inputs, and acceptance criteria.
- Maintain and validate the organizational, job, position, location, cost center, user, and other data needed to support recruiting workflows, integrations, and reporting.
- Own and govern recruiting stages, roles, approvals, templates, disposition reasons, candidate communications, internal hiring practices, offer processes, and downstream handoffs.
- Lead functional testing for system updates and enhancements; document issues, assess business impact, validate fixes, and confirm readiness for release.
- Coordinate change readiness, release communication, user enablement, launch support, and issue triage for recruiting system changes.
- Serve as the functional owner for SmartRecruiters-supported processes, partnering directly with executive decision-makers and global HR and operational leaders to shape priorities, inform key decisions, manage the enhancement roadmap, and drive continuous improvement.
- Partner with HRIS on technical configuration, integrations, security, environments, and releases, and with HR Operations on administration, enablement, reporting, data-quality monitoring, and user support.
University Relations and early-career programs- Develop Albany's University Relations strategy, partnership portfolio, annual engagement calendar, and program measures in consultation with global operational, HR, and executive leaders to align investments with workforce priorities and future skill needs.
- Build relationships with universities, technical schools, apprenticeship partners, career centers, academic programs, faculty, and student organizations.
- Establish criteria for selecting, expanding, maintaining, or discontinuing educational partnerships based on priority skills, locations, business needs, partner commitment, and results.
- Create consistent enterprise frameworks for internships, co-ops, and apprenticeships, including manager resources, participant expectations, development experiences, evaluation practices, and conversion discussions.
- Coordinate campus events and clear handoffs to recruiters and hiring teams when requisition and candidate activity begins.
What you bringRequired qualifications- Approximately seven or more years of progressive experience across talent acquisition operations, recruiting technology, talent programs, or closely related HR work.
- Strong practical knowledge of the end-to-end recruiting lifecycle and the workflows of recruiters, candidates, hiring managers, HR partners, and system administrators.
- Meaningful ownership in an applicant tracking system implementation, migration, major enhancement, or recruiting process transformation.
- Demonstrated ability to elicit requirements, map processes, define fields or workflows, document decisions, and translate business needs for HRIS or technology partners.
- Experience creating or executing user acceptance testing scenarios, documenting defects, and validating functional outcomes.
- Strong systems and data orientation, including attention to definitions, ownership, dependencies, reporting requirements, data quality, and downstream impacts.
- Experience managing external partnerships and aligning relationships to defined business or talent needs.
- Ability to facilitate stakeholders through ambiguity, competing priorities, and decisions requiring enterprise consistency with appropriate local flexibility.
- A people-centered mindset and a genuine interest in building experiences and relationships that support candidates, early-career talent, hiring teams, and educational partners.
- Strong written communication, documentation, organization, and follow-through, with the ability to lead multiple enterprise workstreams with limited day-to-day direction.
- Bachelor's degree or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.
Helpful experience- Functional workstream leadership during an enterprise ATS implementation or migration.
- Experience with SmartRecruiters, SAP SuccessFactors, global recruiting operations, or multi-country process design.
- Experience in manufacturing, engineering, aerospace, industrial, or similarly complex matrixed environment.
- Experience defining recruiting measures, interpreting operational reports, and using findings to improve programs and processes.
- Experience building, governing, or materially improving internships, campus engagement, co-ops, apprenticeships, technical-school partnerships, or a comparable talent-pipeline program.
- Experience with early-career employer branding, campus events, program communications, or manager enablement.
- Project management, change management, HR technology, or talent acquisition certification.
How you will workYou will join a small, highly collaborative Talent Management team and work across HR, technology partners, business leaders, regions, and external institutions. Success requires someone who can move comfortably between strategy and detail, build credibility without formal authority, ask thoughtful questions, challenge assumptions respectfully, and create structure where the path is still emerging.
This role does not carry an ongoing requisition portfolio and does not own candidate assessment, selection, offers, or hiring decisions. Recruiters and hiring leaders retain those responsibilities. HRIS retains technical ownership for integrations, security architecture, and source-system configuration, while HR Operations retains system administration, recurring reporting, user support, and routine data-quality monitoring.
Location, schedule, and travelThis position is onsite in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and follows Albany's 9/80 schedule, with every other Friday off. Travel may be up to 20%, with seasonal variation for educational partnerships, events, and occasional global implementation support.
This is an opportunity to shape the systems, processes, and partnerships that will support Albany's future workforce. You will have visible enterprise impact-helping launch a new global recruiting platform while building durable early-career talent pipelines and consistent experiences for candidates, managers, and partners.
