Own the operational backbone of Amazon's high-volume hiring engine. As Principal Program Manager for Business Operations, you'll serve as the single-threaded operational leader across business operations, process engineering, knowledge management, and financial management for Workforce Staffing (WFS) - the organization responsible for attracting, hiring, and onboarding hundreds of thousands of associates annually across global operations. Reporting to the Transformation leader, you'll influence program managers, tech teams, science partners, and process engineers to ensure WFS runs with discipline, scales with consistency, and improves continuously.
This role demands a leader who thrives in ambiguity - equally comfortable presenting a quarterly business review to VP-level leadership as diving deep into a broken SOP or budget variance. You'll balance frugality with creativity, prioritize root cause over symptom, and demonstrate bias for action while managing calculated risk in a fast-paced, high-volume environment.
Key job responsibilities
Business Rhythm & Reviews: Establish and own WFS's end-to-end business rhythm incorporating finance cycles, corporate planning milestones, and cross-functional dependencies. Own preparation, facilitation, and follow-through for WBR, MBR, QBR, and MPR reviews. Steward annual planning (OP1/OP2) and goal-setting mechanisms.
Process Engineering: Lead process engineering across WFS's hiring workflows (candidate attraction through Day 1), identifying bottlenecks, designing scalable improvements, and partnering with technology teams to automate manual steps.
Knowledge Management: Own WFS knowledge management-ensuring operational playbooks, SOPs, runbooks, and best practices are documented, current, version-controlled, and accessible across all regions and teams.
Financial Operations: Manage budget planning, forecasting, variance analysis, cost allocation across programs, and T&E and controllable line items within budget.
Team & Stakeholder Leadership: Develop, coach, and retain a high-performing team across business operations, process engineering, knowledge management, and finance. Lead cross-team projects ensuring regional and global alignment on strategic WFS initiatives.
A day in the life
You might start by facilitating a Monthly Business Review, surfacing hiring funnel defects and financial variances with clear owners and expected completion dates. You'll shift to reviewing process engineering improvements across WFS's end-to-end hiring workflows-from candidate attraction through Day 1 - partnering with technology teams to automate manual steps. You'll review knowledge management updates ensuring SOPs and runbooks are current and accessible across all regions, then dive into budget variance analysis and cost allocation across programs. Throughout the day, you're representing WFS with cross-functional partners across Operations, PXT, Finance, and Tech - ensuring dependencies are communicated and WFS's perspective is heard.
About the team
Workforce Staffing (WFS) is Amazon's high-volume hiring engine, partnering with Operations, PXT, Finance, and Technology teams to deliver a world-class candidate and associate experience while continuously driving down cost-per-hire and time-to-fill through process innovation, operational rigor, and data-driven decision-making.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
- Bachelor's degree
- 7+ years of working cross functionally with tech and non-tech teams experience
- 7+ years of program or project management experience
- Experience in people management
- 7+ years of managing, analyzing and communicating results to senior leadership experience
- Experience implementing repeatable processes and driving automation or standardization
- Experience defining program requirements and using data and metrics to determine improvements
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Experience managing project delivery
- Experience in recruiting especially high volume hiring, both within direct hiring and outsourcing capacities
- Experience managing teams and building solutions in distributed systems or developing large-scale web applications
- Experience using Lean Process Improvement, Six Sigma methodologies or related performance metrics/process improvements to increase efficiency within processes, forecasting, planning, optimization, and logistics
- Experience working independently with minimal supervision, or 2+ years of Amazon experience
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 - 164,700.00 - 222,800.00 USD annually
