Director, HR Transformation

Stanford University; Palo Alto (CA); Hybrid; USD 192,000 - 233,000; Full time

Job summary

Stanford Graduate School of Business is seeking a Director of HR Transformation to lead the redesign of HR, Finance, and Academic Administration processes. This role builds the operational foundation, aligns people, processes, and systems, and partners with HR Partners, Talent Development, and the HR Service Center to deliver a smoother employee experience.

The ideal candidate has a track record of large-scale process improvement in complex organizations, deep knowledge of HRIS implementations,

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Science, Engineering, Accounting, Finance, Business, or related field.
• 8 years of progressively responsible process-improvement experience; at least 2 years leading complex projects.
• Advanced knowledge of Lean/Six Sigma and project management.

Responsibilities

• Lead cross-functional project teams and drive process-improvement initiatives.
• Develop metrics and collect data to measure performance.
• Provide training and coaching on process-improvement methods.
• Identify opportunities to streamline workflows and improve efficiency.
• Partner with HRIS and enterprise applications teams to enable change.

Skills

Lean Six Sigma

Project management

Process modeling

Change management

Cross-functional leadership

Data analysis

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

Microsoft Office

Google Workspace

Process mapping tools

Job description

GSB Introduction

Stanford's Graduate School of Business (GSB) has built a global reputation based on its immersive and innovative management programs. We provide students a transformative leadership experience, pushing the boundaries of knowledge with faculty research, and offering a portfolio of entrepreneurial and non-degree programs that deliver global impact. We invite you to be part of our mission of developing innovative, principled, and insightful leaders who change lives, change organizations, and change the world. Success at the GSB is defined by The GSB Way, a commitment to shared purpose, community, and excellence in all that we do. We seek individuals who elevate themselves and those around them through the practice of academic candor, generous collaboration, and bringing curiosity and rigor to solving meaningful problems. At the GSB, impact means taking ownership and contributing to a purpose-driven, collaborative, and high-performing community in service to the institution's mission.

Job Summary

The Stanford Graduate School of Business is at an exciting inflection point. With key operational leadership foundations in place, we are entering a period defined by accelerated cultural and structural transformation, including: the multi-year stabilization of Sequoia, Stanford's university-wide Oracle HCM implementation; a redesign of transactional processes shared across Human Resources, Finance, and Academic Administration; and the continued embedding of the GSB Way, our renewed framework for staff excellence, as the operating norm for a high-performing community. Execution at this scale requires structure, capacity, and functional leadership that did not previously exist within the team. The Director, HR Transformation is a newly established role on the GSB HR leadership team, created to fill that gap and build the operational foundation the school needs to sustain its momentum over time. Reporting to the Executive Director of Human Resources, this individual will oversee the HR Operations function and serve as a facilitator of process improvement across the administrative ecosystem. The mandate is clear: strengthen the alignment of people, processes, and systems that delivers genuine change in how the school operates. In practice, the role is about building the operational infrastructure that makes the HR function run with greater precision and less friction, standing up processes, workflows, and data capabilities that can sustain the GSB's evolving model through a period of sustained institutional change. That includes assessing how existing platforms integrate with or extend Sequoia's capabilities, identifying gaps in automated workflows, and determining if new tools to better document the rich history of the employee experience are the right investment. This individual works in active partnership with the HR Business Partners, Talent Development team, and the University's HR Service Center, ensuring that progress on the technical side translates into a materially better experience for managers and staff. The ideal candidate brings a track record of leading process transformation in complex organizations, with direct experience in HRIS implementation and adoption. More than technical expertise, this role calls for someone who understands that durable operational change requires as much attention to how people adopt new ways of working as it does to the systems themselves, and who can build trust across functions that have long operated independently. In addition to the requirements mentioned further below, advanced knowledge of Oracle Cloud, Google Workspace, Smartsheet and data workflow integrations preferred.

Additional Details

Budgeted Salary: The expected pay range for this position is $192,354 - $233,460.

Work Schedule: Hybrid workweek typically at least 3 days onsite.

Responsibilities

Core Duties:

• Independently provide input to project approach and executesignificant portions of a project. Plan, perform and implement processimprovement initiatives. Diagram and evaluate existingprocesses.
• Organize, lead, and facilitate cross-functional project teams.Communicate team progress. Perform cost and benefit analyses.
• Develop metrics that provide data for process measurement,identifying indicators for future improvement opportunities.
• Collect data to identify root cause of problems. Measureperformance against process requirements. Align improvement toperformance shortfalls.
• Provide expert consultation on the use of process improvementtechniques to improve process performance and product quality.
• Provide hands-on team facilitation, coaching, mentoring and/ortraining, and process improvement subject matter expertise to businesspartners.
• Challenge current working practices: identify process improvementopportunities and facilitate goal setting using customer feedback,analysis, and other systems.
• Survey and analyze best practices for techniques andprocesses.
• May mentor, coach, and train junior team members.

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Science, Engineering, Accounting, Finance,Business, or other related field

Minimum Experience:

8 years of progressively responsible, relevant process improvementexperience or combination of education and relevant experience. At least2 year of experience leading complex projects.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• Advanced working knowledge and technical expertise and experienceusing and applying process improvement best practices /techniques, LeanSixSigma, and project management skills in a structured projectenvironment.
• Demonstrated experience modeling business processes using avariety of tools and techniques.
• Ability to work with little or no direction in environmentsresistant to change or unable to change quickly.
• Exceptional communication skills and the ability to communicateand present appropriately at all levels of the organization throughwritten and verbal methods.
• Proven ability to Influence change/innovation initiatives at alllevels, with the ability to interact at the most senior levels of theorganization.
• Strong, demonstrated, ability to work across multiple,distributed, silo’d, functional groups.
• Strong enterprise-wide vision, seeing the big picture,recognizing critical details, and dealing with ambiguity.
• Understanding organization operations and culture and the relatedfunctional capabilities of implemented enterprise applications (customand off-the-shelf).
• Strong proficiency in Microsoft Office, Google Suite, andsoftware applications involving dynamic models and processflows.
• Advanced ability to effectively facilitate training sessions, oneon one, or with a group across all constituencies.

Certificates and Licenses Required

Preferred Lean/Six Sigma Black Belt or other recognizedchange/process certification.