Principal, Human Resources Specialist, ADC Talen

There has never been a more exciting time to be at AWS. Our business is evolving rapidly, the regulatory landscape is shifting under our feet, and the opportunities to deliver value are endless! We are looking for a Principal, Human Resources Specialist to own and drive strategic employee initiatives for a business segment that delivers essential services to AWS national security customers. In this role, you will partner with a global network of cross-functional teams to design and deliver solutions across compensation strategy, employee engagement, workforce planning, career growth, and culture. You will analyze complex data sets and connect what the data tells you to real business priorities. This is a hands-on, high-judgment role where you will build new approaches from scratch, influence the design of long-term tooling, and collaborate with partners across Human Resources, personnel security, and legal to attract and retain a niche talent segment doing meaningful work.

Note: This position requires that the candidate selected be a US Citizen.

Key job responsibilities

• Own the vision and strategy for employee engagement, career growth, and compensation programs (including bonus design) for a growing matrixed AWS business segment, defining the approach where one may not yet exist.
• Analyze complex and sometimes incomplete workforce data to identify trends, inform business priorities, and deliver actionable recommendations to senior leadership through clear written narratives and presentations.
• Design and deliver engagement strategies that build culture across functionally isolated teams, and lead initiatives that enable leadership cohesion in a matrixed global environment.
• Partner with Human Resources Business Partners, compensation, talent acquisition, workforce planning, personnel security, and legal teams to create compliant, scalable mechanisms that attract and retain specialized talent.
• Leverage AI and available tooling to deliver results quickly while collaborating with Technical Program Management and Business Intelligence partners to shape bespoke tools for long-term support.

A day in the life

You might start your morning digging into workforce data to refine a compensation proposal, then jump into a working session with your Business Intelligence Engineer to scope requirements for a new reporting tool. After lunch, you connect with leaders across multiple regions to align on an engagement strategy for teams that operate in isolated environments. Later, you draft a narrative for a senior leadership review, translating what the numbers are telling you into a clear recommendation. In between, you are fielding questions from HR Business Partners, troubleshooting an emerging customer requirement, and sketching out a plan for a culture initiative that has never been done before.

About the team

We are not a typical Human Resources team. We provide both line support through embedded HR Business Partners and program design through embedded specialists, and we also own tooling development and bonus administration. Our customers have contractual and mission-oriented needs that require us to build original solutions rather than pull from existing playbooks. We partner with compensation, talent acquisition, workforce planning, personnel security, and legal - and we are growing. This role gives you exposure across the full AWS ecosystem, a chance to work with a team that takes real accountability for its work, and the opportunity to shape how we support a critical and expanding customer segment.