Talent Partner

UC San Francisco (UCSF); San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

UCSF is seeking a Talent Partner within Organizational Effectiveness to serve as the primary OE engagement lead for multiple operating units in a complex, regulated healthcare environment. You will bridge senior leaders with OE specialists, framing needs, coordinating cross-functional engagements, and driving implementations from intake through review.

You will apply broad OE knowledge, strong PM skills, and stakeholder management to deliver practical, enterprise-wide solutions across UCSF

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent in a related field.
• 4+ years in organizational effectiveness, internal consulting, or related work.
• Broad OE knowledge with judgment for complex needs.
• Strong PM capability across multi-stakeholder initiatives.
• Demonstrated consulting and senior-leader relationship skills.
• Systems thinking, diagnostic, problem framing, and analytics.
• Ability to synthesize multiple disciplines into a coherent solution.
• Excellent organization, follow-through, and stakeholder management.
• Experience with frontline-intensive, clinical, academic, or complex environments.
• Track record in managing cross-functional engagements from framing to review.
• Preferred: Master's or higher; MP/Prosci/Agile certs; healthcare/academic medicine experience; knowledge of OE practice areas.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end coordination of Talent offers, processes, and tools across OE.
• Assemble cross-pillar OE expertise for engagements needing multiple capabilities.
• Maintain coherent engagement with clear roles, handoffs, and accountability.
• Anticipate barriers, escalate risks, and drive momentum in complex initiatives.
• Use disciplined PM practices while ensuring sound organizational diagnosis.
• Conduct discovery and framing to translate needs into interventions.
• Frame problems by structure, leadership, teams, and culture with SME input.
• Integrate recommendations into practical solutions for the business context.
• Translate recommendations into implementation actions and sequencing.
• Support implementation with stakeholder coordination and adoption activities.
• Maintain relationships with leaders, HR partners, and OE specialists.
• Ensure leaders understand changes, required actions, and sponsorship needs.
• Transition completed work into sustainable ownership.
• Measure outcomes with OE/Impact teams and capture lessons for portfolio learning.
• Recommend where to continue, scale, or conclude OE work.

Skills

Project & program management

Consulting & relationship management

Systems thinking & diagnostic ability

Cross-functional collaboration

Stakeholder management

Complex engagement leadership

Problem framing & solution integration

Organizational diagnosis & analysis

Frontline-heavy environment experience

Interpersonal communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in organizational development, business, HR, PM, healthcare admin, or related field

Master's degree or higher in a related field

Job description

Job Summary:

The Talent Partner is a senior individual contributor within Organizational Effectiveness, reporting to the Director, Organization Design & Effectiveness. Each role is aligned to two to three UCSF operating units and serves as the primary Talent & Organizational Effectiveness relationship and engagement lead for those areas, building a strong understanding of business priorities, operating realities, organizational challenges, and the portfolio of OE work underway.
The role combines broad organizational effectiveness consulting capability with strong project and program management. It helps leaders frame organizational needs, distinguishes symptoms from underlying issues, coordinates the right OE expertise, and manages complex engagements from intake through implementation and review. The Talent Partner does not need to be the deepest subject-matter expert in every OE discipline; it is accountable for keeping the customer relationship and integrated engagement coherent while drawing on specialist expertise in organization design, transformation, culture, team effectiveness, talent, learning, and future-of-work innovation as needed.
The role works across UCSF Health and Campus, including clinical, operational, research, education, and administrative environments, and must be credible with leaders operating complex, frontline-intensive and highly regulated systems.

Department Summary:

The Organizational Effectiveness function within Human Resources develops leaders, strengthens organizations, optimizes talent systems, and advances innovative approaches that enable UCSF's people and mission to thrive. The Organization Design & Effectiveness pillar serves UCSF Health and Campus as an enterprise consulting and transformation capability, helping hospitals, clinical and operational teams, research and academic units, and administrative functions improve performance by ensuring the full suite of Talent solutions, offers, products, tools and experiences are leveraged and ultimately imbedded in the Operating Units. Work secondarily encompasses organization design, transformation, culture, team effectiveness, and disciplined execution.

Operating Unit POC

• Serve as the primary OE relationship and engagement lead for three assigned business units and their respective HRBPs, developing a strong understanding of their strategies, operating environments, leadership priorities, and organizational challenges.
• Bring our Talent Offer to the Operating Unit and manage the OU engagement in our Talent and Leadership Initiatives.
• Maintain an integrated view of OE demand, active engagements, emerging needs, and dependencies across assigned business units.
• Conduct initial discovery and problem framing, using broad OE knowledge and systems thinking to clarify needs before determining the appropriate intervention or specialist support.
• Identify recurring themes and enterprise-level opportunities and surface them to the Director for prioritization and capacity decisions.
• Partner closely with HR Business Partners while maintaining clear distinction between HRBP accountability and OE specialist support.

Integrated Engagement & Project Management

• Own the end-to-end coordination of Talent offers, processes & tools. Work with Talent SMEs across our department, including scope, outcomes, workplans, milestones, stakeholders, risks, dependencies, decisions, and follow-through.
• Assemble and coordinate cross-pillar OE expertise when an engagement requires organization design, transformation, culture, talent, learning, leadership, or future-of-work capabilities.
• Keep the overall customer engagement coherent when multiple specialists contribute, ensuring clear roles, handoffs, communication, and accountability.
• Anticipate barriers, elevate material risks and trade-offs, and maintain momentum across complex, matrixed initiatives.
• Use disciplined project and program management practices without allowing process to substitute for sound organizational diagnosis and judgment.

Organizational Diagnosis & Solution Integration

• Use interviews, stakeholder input, workforce and operational data, observation, and systems thinking to help distinguish presenting requests from underlying organizational issues.
• Frame problems in terms of structure, leadership, work, teams, culture, talent, operating model, or other organizational factors and engage the appropriate subject-matter expertise.
• Integrate recommendations across OE disciplines into practical solutions that fit the business context and support operational performance.
• Work with leaders and specialists to translate recommendations into clear implementation actions, ownership, and sequencing.

Implementation, Change & Stakeholder Coordination

• Support implementation of OE recommendations by coordinating stakeholders, communications, decisions, adoption activities, and dependencies.
• Maintain strong relationships with business leaders, HR partners, and OE specialists throughout the engagement lifecycle.
• Ensure leaders understand what is changing, what is required of them, and where decisions or sponsorship are required.
• Help transition completed work into sustainable business ownership rather than creating ongoing dependence on OE.

Measurement, Review & Portfolio Learning

• Partner with OE Strategic Operations & Impact team and Talent SMEs to establish intended outcomes and practical success measures for priority work.
• Monitor engagement progress and outcomes, surface evidence of what is or is not working, and support post-implementation review.
• Capture lessons, patterns, and reusable practices from operating-unit work and feed them back into the OE practice.
• Use portfolio evidence to recommend where work should continue, adapt, scale, or conclude.

Required:

• Bachelor's degree in organizational development, business, human resources, project/program management, healthcare administration, or a related field, and/or equivalent experience.
• 4 years of progressive experience in organizational effectiveness, internal consulting, program/project management, transformation, or related work in complex organizations.
• Broad organizational effectiveness knowledge with the judgment to frame complex organizational needs and identify when specialist expertise is required.
• Strong project and program management capability across complex, multi-stakeholder initiatives.
• Demonstrated consulting and relationship-management skills with senior leaders and HR partners.
• Strong systems thinking, organizational diagnosis, problem framing, and analytical capability.
• Ability to integrate multiple disciplines and recommendations into a coherent business solution.
• Exceptional organization, follow-through, communication, facilitation, and stakeholder-management skills.
• Experience working with frontline-intensive, operational, clinical, academic, research, or other complex work environments.
• Demonstrated experience managing complex cross-functional engagements from problem framing through implementation and review.

Preferred:

• Master's degree or higher in a related field.
• MP, Prosci, Agile, organization design, facilitation, or related certifications.
• Experience in healthcare, academic medicine, higher education, or another highly regulated 24/7 operating environment.
• Working knowledge of organization design, change, culture, talent, learning, and/or workforce effectiveness practices.

About UCSF

The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It is the only campus in the 10-campus UC system dedicated exclusively to the health sciences. We bring together the world’s leading experts in nearly every area of health. We are home to five Nobel laureates who have advanced the understanding of cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, aging and stem cells.

Pride Values

UCSF is a diverse community made of people with many skills and talents. We seek candidates whose work experience or community service has prepared them to contribute to our commitment to professionalism, respect, integrity, diversity and excellence – also known as our PRIDE values.

In addition to our PRIDE values, UCSF is committed to equity – both in how we deliver care as well as our workforce. We are committed to building a broadly diverse community, nurturing a culture that is welcoming and supportive, and engaging diverse ideas for the provision of culturally competent education, discovery, and patient care. Additional information about UCSF is available here.

Join us to find a rewarding career contributing to improving healthcare worldwide.

Equal Employment Opportunity

The University of California is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, protected veteran status, or other protected status under state or federal law.

Salary Information

The final salary and offer components are subject to additional approvals based on UC policy.

Your placement within the salary range is dependent on a number of factors including your work experience and internal equity within this position classification at UCSF. For positions that are represented by a labor union, placement within the salary range will be guided by the rules in the collective bargaining agreement.

To learn more about the benefits of working at UCSF, including total compensation, please visit: https://ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/compensation-and-benefits/index.html