Principal, Talent Management

Northwestern Mutual•Colorado Springs, MA

8d•$143,920 - $225,600

About The Position

The Principal, Talent Planning & Design leads the end-to-end design and continuous evolution of an integrated workforce and talent ecosystem. The role connects Strategic Workforce Planning, skills, talent review, succession, and career development to help the enterprise anticipate talent needs, understand talent supply, build critical skills, strengthen leadership pipelines, and enable employee growth. It translates workforce and talent insights into scalable processes, decision frameworks, governance, user experiences, and enabling requirements that support decisions about workforce capacity, talent readiness, development priorities, and succession risk. Working across Talent, Finance, Technology, HR Technology, Talent Analytics, HR Business Partners, and business leadership, this leader turns complex workforce and talent needs into practical, user-centered processes and experiences. The role is not focused on technology configuration; its purpose is to convert workforce insights into practical actions that strengthen organizational readiness. Key outcomes include an integrated skills intelligence and workforce planning ecosystem; a scalable Strategic Workforce Planning process; modernized talent review and succession practices; skills-based talent experiences; career and development experiences; and consistent, data-informed decisions supported by fit-for-purpose technology, clear governance, defined ownership, and continuous improvement.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, Organizational Development, Finance, Strategy, Design, or a related field.
10+ years of experience in Strategic Workforce Planning, workforce strategy, talent management, succession, career development, skills strategy, organizational effectiveness, talent management experience design, HR or Talent consulting, or related disciplines.
Depth of experience in Strategic Workforce Planning, including scenario planning, talent demand and supply, workforce economics, skills-based planning, workforce strategy, or labor investment decisions.
Demonstrated experience integrating talent review, succession planning, career development, and skills-based talent practices with workforce data and planning insights.
Demonstrated experience designing and evolving enterprise talent, workforce, organizational effectiveness, or planning solutions that are practical, scalable, user-centered, and connected to business outcomes.
Experience translating business and user needs into requirements, use cases, process designs, governance models, data and reporting needs, adoption plans, and technology-enabled solutions.
Experience partnering across Talent, Finance, Technology, HR Business Partners, Talent Analytics, HR Technology, and business stakeholder groups.

Nice To Haves

Advanced degree.
Experience working in technology-enabled planning or talent environments.
Familiarity with Strategic Workforce Planning platforms and HRIS technology; hands-on system configuration is not required.

Responsibilities

Partner with Strategic Workforce Planning to design and improve processes, experiences, and capabilities that connect business strategy, operating and financial plans, workforce demand and supply, skills, capacity, cost, location, and timing.
Translate workforce planning needs into process designs, planning activities, decision points, user journeys, governance routines, data and reporting requirements, and adoption plans.
Design scenario-planning approaches that help leaders assess workforce gaps and evaluate investment tradeoffs, including build, buy, borrow, redeploy, or automate actions.
Design how workforce demand, talent supply, skills, talent review, succession, and development practices work together to support enterprise talent decisions.
Lead the design and improvement of talent review, calibration, and succession processes, including identifying critical roles, evaluating readiness, assessing succession coverage, and identifying talent risks.
Translate succession insights into enterprise risk visibility, including critical role coverage, successor-pool depth, readiness gaps, mobility constraints, and exposure in business-critical leadership roles.
Integrate and continuously evolve skills across workforce planning and talent experiences so skills insights inform talent decisions, career growth, internal mobility, and employee development.
Lead the design and evolution of career and development experiences, including career exploration, career and development conversations, and visibility into internal opportunities.
Translate employee and leader needs into requirements for enabling capabilities such as personalized learning suggestions, development plans, career navigation, opportunity marketplaces, gigs, internal networking, and skills-enabled recommendations.
Create mechanisms to identify, track, and activate enterprise talent across business units so high-potential and succession-critical talent is visible beyond current reporting lines.
Use user-centered design methods to understand business, employee, leader, and HR needs and translate them into scalable processes, decision frameworks, user experiences, and supporting resources.
Partner with HR Engineering, HR Technology, Business Finance, and Strategic Workforce Planning teams to define business requirements, priorities, data needs, reporting expectations, and experience considerations.
Develop enablement, guidance, and adoption approaches that help users understand and consistently apply new processes and capabilities.
Establish governance models clarifying enterprise standards, ownership, decision rights, cross-functional handoffs, operating rhythms, and exception management.
Define success measures and use workforce data, experience insights, stakeholder feedback, and adoption indicators to identify friction, improve processes, and inform future design priorities.
Facilitate cross-functional discovery and decision-making, advise senior stakeholders, and communicate complex workforce and talent concepts to executive, business, HR, and technical audiences.