Employee Engagement Lead

Maximus; Tysons, Northern (VA, KY); Hybrid; USD 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Maximus in Tysons, VA seeks an Employee Engagement Lead to shape the employee journey, focusing on belonging, onboarding, and lifecycle experiences. You will lead programs that connect, prepare, and energize employees while partnering with HR to drive culture and readiness.

The role requires design thinking, data-informed decisions, and collaboration across HR, Talent Acquisition, and Communications to deliver scalable, high-impact experiences that align with business goals.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a relevant field with 7+ years of professional experience.
• Experience designing or delivering employee experience, engagement, onboarding, culture, or related lifecycle initiatives.
• Strong program execution skills with ability to plan timelines and coordinate stakeholders.
• Strong facilitation, communication, and presentation skills.
• Ability to translate employee feedback, participation data, and stakeholder input into practical recommendations.
• Ability to influence across HR Centers of Excellence, HRBPs, managers, and communications partners.
• Strong judgment, prioritization, and ability to define boundaries in a broad, visible role.

Responsibilities

• Own the annual HQ experience plan, design on-site engagement activities, and strengthen belonging and culture.
• Own the full candidate-to-employee transition experience, improving onboarding warmth, clarity, and integration.
• Identify and enhance priority employee journey touchpoints across the lifecycle with HR COEs.
• Develop and leverage employee experience metrics, feedback, participation data, and sentiment insights.
• Align and influence partners to co-design and implement improvements.
• Plan and deliver employee-facing programs, events, and experience improvements end-to-end.
• Facilitate journey mapping and apply design thinking to improve experiences.
• Manage intake governance, categorize requests, prioritize work, and maintain clear plans.

Skills

Program management

Facilitation

Communication

Stakeholder partnership

Data-driven decision making

Influence across HR

Prioritization

Education

Bachelor's degree

Job description

The Employee Engagement Lead plays a key role in shaping and enhancing the employee journey by designing and delivering experiences that foster connection, belonging, engagement, and organizational effectiveness. Acting as an Employee Experience Architect, this role translates business priorities into meaningful employee experiences that positively influence how individuals join, connect, contribute, and grow within the organization.

As part of the evolution of the Employee Experience function, this role focuses on creating intentional, high-impact experiences across critical moments in the employee lifecycle. Key areas of responsibility include enhancing the headquarters employee experience, strengthening organizational culture and belonging, improving onboarding programs, and designing initiatives that support employee engagement and retention.

The successful candidate will lead the development, execution, and continuous improvement of employee experience programs that drive connection, readiness, productivity, and business outcomes. This role requires a blend of program management, experience design, stakeholder partnership, change influence, and data-informed decision-making to create impactful and scalable employee-centered solutions.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Own the annual HQ experience plan, design on-site engagement activities, and strengthen belonging and culture through experiences.
• Own the full candidate-to-employee transition experience, improving onboarding consistency, warmth, clarity, and early integration.
• Identify and enhance priority employee journey touchpoints across the employee lifecycle in partnership with HR COEs.
• Develop and leverage employee experience metrics, feedback, participation data, and sentiment insights to guide improvements.
• Align and influence partners to co-design and implement employee experience improvements.
• Plan and deliver employee-facing programs, events, and experience improvements end-to-end.
• Facilitate journey mapping and apply design thinking methodologies to improve employee experiences.
• Manage intake governance, categorize requests, establish priorities, and maintain clear work plans and boundaries.

Key Responsibilities:

Headquarters Experience and Belonging

• Develop and maintain an annual headquarters experience plan for Tysons, VA headquarters.
• Design and execute meaningful on-site events, experiences, and activities that promote connection, engagement, belonging, and culture.
• Create opportunities for cross-functional connection and community-building.
• Reinforce organizational culture, values, and priorities through employee experiences.
• Use feedback and participation data to continuously improve headquarters programming.

Onboarding Journey and New Hire Experience

• Own the employee experience from accepted offer through early new hire integration.
• Map and improve the onboarding journey, with emphasis on the key moments that matter for new hires.
• Partner with Talent Acquisition, HRBPs, managers, Learning, Communications, HRIS, and other stakeholders to improve consistency, warmth, clarity, and ease across onboarding.
• Capture new hire feedback and use insights to reduce friction and improve the new hire experience.
• Help new employees feel welcomed, connected, prepared, and confident as they transition into the organization.

Employee Lifecycle Experience Design

• Serve as an internal consultant on employee experience design.
• Partner with HR Centers of Excellence to improve priority employee lifecycle moments.
• Support journey mapping and experience improvement efforts across selected lifecycle touchpoints.
• Bring an employee-centered lens to HR programs and processes.
• Use employee feedback and data to identify opportunities for improvement, in partnership with the Employee Listening team.
• Influence enhancements across recognition, learning, career development, manager enablement, culture, and related lifecycle areas.

Experience Insights, Measurement, and Storytelling

• Develop a practical employee experience scorecard that connects activity, feedback, insights, and business relevance.
• Measure headquarters experience, onboarding journey, and lifecycle experience design outcomes using participation, feedback, sentiment, stakeholder input, and improvement indicators.
• Translate data into clear insights, recommendations, and storytelling that answer the question, “So what?”
• Use measurement to demonstrate how employee experience work supports belonging, readiness, retention, productivity, culture, and efficiency.

Governance, Intake, and Prioritization

• Establish and maintain a simple intake and prioritization process for employee experience requests.
• Clarify whether requests fall into owned, partnered, transitioned, or out-of-scope categories.
• Maintain clear workplans, stakeholder maps, timelines, and decision points for initiatives within the role’s scope.
• Use quarterly planning to manage workload, capacity, and competing priorities.

• Bachelor's degree in relevant field of study and 7+ years of relevant professional experience required, or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Experience designing or delivering employee experience, employee engagement, onboarding, culture, organizational development, HR programs, or related employee lifecycle initiatives.
• Strong program execution skills, including the ability to plan work, manage timelines, coordinate stakeholders, and deliver outcomes.
• Strong facilitation, communication, and presentation skills.
• Ability to translate employee feedback, participation data, and stakeholder input into practical recommendations.
• Ability to influence across HR Centers of Excellence, HRBPs, managers, business stakeholders, and communications partners.
• Strong judgment, prioritization, and ability to define boundaries in a role with broad employee-facing visibility.

Preferred skills and Qualifications:

• Experience with onboarding journey design or new hire experience improvement.
• Experience with journey mapping, employee listening insights, or employee lifecycle design.
• Experience developing scorecards, dashboards, or practical measurement frameworks.
• Experience supporting headquarters, site-based, or hybrid employee experience programs.
• Certification or coursework in employee experience, organizational development, change management, design thinking, project management, or HR.

EEO Statement

Maximus is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability, veteran status, genetic information and other legally protected characteristics.

Pay Transparency

Maximus compensation is based on various factors including but not limited to job location, a candidate's education, training, experience, expected quality and quantity of work, required travel (if any), external market and internal value analysis including seniority and merit systems, as well as internal pay alignment. Annual salary is just one component of Maximus's total compensation package. Other rewards may include short- and long-term incentives as well as program-specific awards. Additionally, Maximus provides a variety of benefits to employees, including health insurance coverage, life and disability insurance, a retirement savings plan, paid holidays and paid time off. Compensation ranges may differ based on contract value but will be commensurate with job duties and relevant work experience. An applicant's salary history will not be used in determining compensation. Maximus will comply with regulatory minimum wage rates and exempt salary thresholds in all instances.

Accommodations

Maximus provides reasonable accommodations to individuals requiring assistance during any phase of the employment process due to a disability, medical condition, or physical or mental impairment. If you require assistance at any stage of the employment process—including accessing job postings, completing assessments, or participating in interviews,—please contact People Operations at [e-mail] .