Human Resources Specialist

Coforge; Princeton (NJ); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Coforge seeks a senior People leader to build and scale the Momentuum blue practice, embedded with client engagements. You will own the end‑to‑end People function, from academy design to ongoing career development, reporting to senior leadership and collaborating with delivery teams.

The role requires 8–12 years in HR, strong AI fluency, and the ability to design scalable processes for a fast-growing engineering workforce in Princeton, NJ, with travel to future pods and relocation as needed.

Qualifications

• Experience leading HR functions in high-growth tech environments.
• Proven ability to design scalable People programs and processes.
• Strong capability in recruitment, culture, and performance systems.

Responsibilities

• Design and own the Momentuum blue People function within Coforge.
• Lead cohort-based talent development, academy, and pods structure.
• Partner with executives to align HR strategy with business goals.
• Define metrics for practice health and retention in client-embedded teams.

Skills

AI fluency

People/HR leadership

Talent acquisition

Organizational design

Stakeholder management

Education

8–12 years in People/HR roles

Job description

Reports to: Chief Technology Officer, Coforge

Partners closely with: SVP & Deputy Chief People Officer (Coforge corporate People org), Delivery & Operations leadership, AI Center of Excellence, Marketing

Location: Princeton, NJ (academy hub) — will need to travel to additional Momentuum blue pod sites in the future. Can consider people who are willing to relocate and be in Princeton office.

About Momentuum blue:

Momentuum blue is Coforge's Forward Deployed Engineer practice — built to be operationally deployed, not just announced. Our engineers don't sit in a staffing pool; they embed directly inside client environments, work in Mod Squad pods (Human engineers and AI agents working as a unit), and are measured against outcomes, not hours.

We built our founding cohort the hard way: several hundred applicants, a low-single-digit acceptance rate, and an 11-week onsite in-person academy before a single engineer touched a client engagement. Every cohort since will be held to that same bar. We are already embedded in enterprise engagements across financial services and insurance, with more industries opening up. Growth from here is deliberate, cohort by cohort — not headcount-first.

This is a genuinely new category of technical talent organization inside Coforge, and it doesn't run on the same People infrastructure as traditional IT services delivery. That's the gap this role exists to close.

Why This Role Exists

Every FDE — Senior and Associate — is part of Momentuum blue. That means one leader needs to own the full arc of how this workforce is built, developed, and retained: from the first interview, through the academy, into a pod, and across a career that looks more like a technical career ladder at a top product company than a traditional model.

This isn't a role that administers an existing People function. It's a role that builds one — in real time, alongside a practice that's scaling fast and changing shape as it grows.

What You’ll Own

• Design how Momentuum blue's org structure evolves as it scales from a founding cohort to a multi-cohort practice — reporting lines, pod composition, and career levels distinct from standard IT services grades.
• Define the boundary between what runs on Momentuum blue-specific infrastructure and what leverages Coforge's corporate People systems — deliberately, not by default.
• Partner with delivery leadership to right-size Senior-to-Associate FDE ratios per pod as engagements move from conversation to deployment.

2. Talent Acquisition & Cohort Pipeline

• Own end-to-end hiring for every future cohort — sourcing, screening, selection — and own the decision of where the selectivity bar sits as volume grows.
• Build recruiting infrastructure that can repeat reliably on a ~45-day cohort cadence, starting with the next cohort's recruiting cycle.
• Run a separate, senior-level pipeline for lateral Senior FDE hires — experienced engineers who can lead a pod and hold a direct client relationship from day one.
• Co-own the 11-week residential academy with curriculum and training partners, balancing technical readiness with cultural alignment.
• Own the cohort experience end to end, including Day 0 and the first weeks that set the tone for everything after.
• Track academy outcomes that actually predict pod success: completion, skill readiness, cultural fit, time-to-deployment.

4. Culture & the Covenant

• Take operational ownership of the Momentuum blue Covenant — carrying it from a working draft into a living document the practice actually holds itself to.
• Build feedback and engagement mechanisms that work for a workforce that's mostly embedded at client sites, not sitting in a shared office.
• Keep FDEs connected to a shared identity even when their daily reality is a client environment, not a Momentuum blue one.

5. Performance & Career Pathing

• Design a performance framework built around outcomes, not tasks or hours — the same mental model FDEs are hired into on day one.
• Build the career ladder from Associate FDE through Senior FDE to Pod Lead, with progression criteria that are objective enough to defend.
• Own retention past the academy — currently one of the two biggest risks to the practice’s growth plan, alongside Senior FDE supply.

6. Pod People Operations

• Manage the people side of pod formation, staffing, and rebalancing across active and pipeline engagements.
• Be the escalation point for people issues inside client environments, where FDEs operate with more autonomy and exposure than a typical staffed engagement.
• Bring the people lens into new engagements early — from first client conversation through to deployment, not after.

7. People Data & Practice Health

• Build reporting that goes beyond booking and utilization to answer the harder question: is the practice actually healthy?
• Partner with corporate HR systems to get what Momentuum blue needs without duplicating infrastructure that already exists.
• Define and own metrics that don't have a template yet — this practice doesn't fit a standard IT services People model, and the reporting shouldn't pretend it does.

8. Employer Brand & Talent Marketing

• Partner with Marketing on how Momentuum blue shows up to the talent it's actually competing for — engineers weighing this against top tech companies and other FDE-style programs, not traditional IT services offers.
• Represent the People story in recruiting content, campus relationships, and cohort marketing moments.

What You’ll Bring

AI-Native Fluency — A Hard Requirement, Not a Preference

• You use AI tools directly in your own work today — sourcing and screening at scale, drafting and synthesizing culture/engagement data, building reporting — not just approving their use by others.
• You're able to design HR systems and workflows (recruiting pipeline, performance tracking, practice‑health reporting) that assume AI-assisted work as the default, not a manual process with AI bolted on.
• You can speak credibly to how AI reshapes career pathing, performance definition, and team structure for a workforce whose daily unit of work is a human-plus-agent pod — this isn't background context for you, it's the operating environment of the people you're managing.
• You track how AI is changing hiring and People practice at peer organizations building similar models and bring that thinking into how this function evolves — this role needs to move as fast as the technology it supports.
• This bar applies to you personally, not just to the FDEs you'll be hiring: AI fluency is an evaluated requirement across every Momentuum blue hire, and this role is no exception.

Everything Else

• 8–12 years in People/HR roles, including meaningful time building a People function inside a high‑growth technology, startup, or professional‑services environment — not only administering one that already existed.
• Experience with distributed or client‑embedded workforces is a strong plus (consulting, staffing, or professional services backgrounds welcome).
• Comfort building in ambiguity. This function is being designed alongside the practice it supports, in real time.
• A bias toward proof over promises — someone who builds and measures, rather than announces.
• The presence to be a credible, trusted figure to a founding cohort of ambitious, early‑career engineers — not just a policy administrator they interact with once a year.

What Success Looks Like

First 90 days: Recruiting infrastructure ready for the next cohort cycle; clear read on where practice‑health reporting needs to go beyond current booking data

6 months: Repeatable cohort cadence running smoothly; Covenant moved from working draft to an adopted, living document

Through first cohort's pod deployment: Retention and time‑to‑deployment tracked and trending in the right direction; career ladder in active use, not just on paper

Ongoing: Org structure and People systems scale with the practice without becoming the bottleneck to growth

Why Now

Momentuum blue is past the concept stage — the founding cohort exists, pods are deployed, and clients are engaged. What doesn't exist yet is the People function built to match how this practice actually works. That's this role: the chance to design, from close to zero, how a genuinely new kind of engineering organization hires, develops, and keeps its people — with a founding cohort already in motion to build it around.