Albany International is seeking a Senior Talent Acquisition Programs & Systems Specialist to lead two connected enterprise portfolios: talent acquisition systems and process stewardship, and University Relations. This senior individual contributor will combine recruiting expertise, systems thinking, program management, and external partnership leadership to create scalable talent practices across our global organization.
The first major priority is leading the talent acquisition functional work for Albany's transition from its current ATS to SmartRecruiters, go live is planned for January 2028. Following the launch, this role will steward the recruiting processes supported by SmartRecruiters and lead the Talent Acquisition and University Relations strategies, including program infrastructure for internships, campus engagement, co-ops, apprenticeships, and technical-school partnerships.
Reports to: Director, Talent Management | Level: Senior individual contributor
What you will do
Talent acquisition systems and process leadership
- Continuously assess recruiting practices, processes, handoffs, tools, and local variations to improve the end-to-end experience from requisition through hire.
- Engage global operational and HR leaders to understand business needs, surface regional and functional considerations, and translate priorities and user feedback into clear process maps, requirements, field definitions, decision logs, configuration inputs, and acceptance criteria.
- Maintain and validate the organizational, job, position, location, cost center, user, and other data needed to support recruiting workflows, integrations, and reporting.
- Own and govern recruiting stages, roles, approvals, templates, disposition reasons, candidate communications, internal hiring practices, offer processes, and downstream handoffs.
- Lead functional testing for system updates and enhancements; document issues, assess business impact, validate fixes, and confirm readiness for release.
- Coordinate change readiness, release communication, user enablement, launch support, and issue triage for recruiting system changes.
- Serve as the functional owner for SmartRecruiters-supported processes, partnering directly with executive decision-makers and global HR and operational leaders to shape priorities, inform key decisions, manage the enhancement roadmap, and drive continuous improvement.
- Partner with HRIS on technical configuration, integrations, security, environments, and releases, and with HR Operations on administration, enablement, reporting, data-quality monitoring, and user support.
University Relations and early-career programs
- Develop Albany's University Relations strategy, partnership portfolio, annual engagement calendar, and program measures in consultation with global operational, HR, and executive leaders to align investments with workforce priorities and future skill needs.
- Build relationships with universities, technical schools, apprenticeship partners, career centers, academic programs, faculty, and student organizations.
- Establish criteria for selecting, expanding, maintaining, or discontinuing educational partnerships based on priority skills, locations, business needs, partner commitment, and results.
- Create consistent enterprise frameworks for internships, co-ops, and apprenticeships, including manager resources, participant expectations, development experiences, evaluation practices, and conversion discussions.
- Coordinate campus events and clear handoffs to recruiters and hiring teams when requisition and candidate activity begins.