Principal Manager, HR Business Partner

Position Summary

The Principal Manager, HR Business Partner is a strategic people leader responsible for the direction, effectiveness, and growth of Nava’s HR Business Partner function, including the direct management and development of the People Operations Business Partner (POBP). This role sets the strategy for how Nava’s people practices support the business, translating enterprise priorities into workforce frameworks, organizational design principles, and talent strategies that HR Business Partners apply across their assigned business areas.

This role builds a high-performing People Operations Business Partner team, coaching and developing POBP talent while serving as a trusted strategic advisor to senior executives on organizational structure, workforce planning, performance, and labor and employee relations. The Principal Manager co-owns enterprise frameworks such as workforce planning, career pathing, and organizational design standards that POBPs use to advise business leaders, ensuring these frameworks remain consistent, equitable, and aligned with Nava’s mission.

As Nava evolves toward an AI-native operating model, the Principal Manager sets the strategic point of view on how artificial intelligence and automation will change roles, skills, team structures, and management practices. They equip the POBP team to guide leaders through this change responsibly, balancing efficiency gains with employee trust, equity, compliance, and sound human judgment.

All responsibilities will be carried out in service of Nava’s values: Be Active Stewards, Delivery over Dogma, Build Together, Innovation Requires New Perspectives, and Progress Takes Work.

What You’ll Do

• Directly manage, coach, and develop the People Operations Business Partner, setting clear goals and providing regular feedback and career development support
• Build and scale the People Operations Business Partner function across the employee lifecycle, managing workload distribution as the organization scales
• Establish performance expectations, competencies, and quality standards for POBP work and regularly assess the team
• Foster a culture of accountability, trust, and continuous improvement within the POBP team
• Serve as a trusted strategic advisor to senior executives on organizational design, workforce planning, performance management, and employee relations
• Translate enterprise business priorities into people strategy, ensuring HRBP practice aligns with company goals
• Set the strategic point of view on how AI and automation will affect roles, skills, team structures, and management practices, and equip HRBPs to guide leaders through responsible adoption
• Partner with Talent Acquisition, Total Rewards, and Learning & Organization Enablement leadership to deliver a cohesive, enterprise-wide employee experience
• Represent the People Operations Business Partner function in enterprise-level people strategy and planning discussions
• Develop and maintain Nava’s enterprise workforce-planning frameworks and career-pathing structures that POBPs apply across business areas
• Partner with Finance, Operations, and Delivery business leaders to align workforce plans with delivery commitments, organizational capacity, and financial plans
• Guide organizational design decisions, including team restructures, leadership transitions, position eliminations, and other significant workforce actions
• Evaluate spans of control, reporting structures, and organizational capability across the business to identify opportunities for greater effectiveness
• Set standards for evaluating technology-enabled efficiency proposals, ensuring they are supported by realistic change-management plans and workforce data
• Coach the POBP team on how to develop leaders and managers on organizational leadership, team effectiveness, accountability, and performance
• Identify recurring, cross-organizational manager challenges and direct the development of scalable tools, guidance, and learning interventions
• Champion the building of inclusive, accountable, and psychologically safe teams across the business
• Guide the POBP team through complex or sensitive leadership situations, promoting sound judgment, consistency, and fairness
• Own the people and organizational strategy for significant business changes, setting direction for the HRBP team’s execution
• Direct assessments of stakeholder impact, organizational readiness, and employee-relations risk for major change initiatives
• Set change-management standards and ensure the HRBP team delivers clear implementation plans, communications, and manager resources
• Monitor the impact of organizational changes at the enterprise level and adjust strategy based on workforce data and outcomes
• Serve as an escalation point for complex, high-risk, or sensitive labor and employee relations matters
• Partner with Legal and People Operations leadership on high-impact investigations and risk assessments
• Maintain enterprise-level knowledge of applicable federal, state, and local employment requirements and ensure HRBP practice reflects current law
• Set the strategy for employee- and labor-relations practices related to AI-enabled workplace changes, including monitoring, workload, and role requirements
• Support employee-relations practices within Nava’s unionized environment and ensure compliance with collective bargaining obligations
• Identify systemic patterns in employee concerns and direct the development of organization-wide solutions
• Escalate significant organizational, legal, cultural, or employee-experience risks appropriately
• Sponsor and oversee complex, cross-functional people initiatives from problem definition through implementation and evaluation
• Coordinate with leaders across People Operations, Finance, Legal, IT, Talent Acquisition, and delivery teams
• Provide clear, executive-level updates on initiative progress, risk, and outcomes
• Ensure initiatives are meaningfully adopted and sustained across the organization
• Set the strategy for using workforce data to identify trends, organizational health indicators, and emerging risks
• Partner with People Workforce Insights, Staffing, and Finance to improve enterprise workforce reporting and decision-making
• Translate data into clear insights and recommendations for executive leadership
• Ensure appropriate data integrity, confidentiality, and documentation standards across the POBP function
• Drive cross-functional initiatives that improve the employee and manager experience
• Identify and resolve policies, processes, systems, or operating practices that create unnecessary complexity, inconsistency, risk, or administrative burden
• Direct improvements that increase clarity, scalability, compliance, and organizational effectiveness
• Ensure People Operations programs and processes are practical for managers and aligned with Nava’s broader people strategy
• Champion the adoption of self-service tools and standardized practices while preserving appropriate judgment for complex situations

Required Skills

• 10+ years of People Operations and/or Human Resources experience
• Demonstrated experience translating business strategy into organizational design, workforce planning, and talent strategy at the enterprise level
• Thorough knowledge of People Operations and Human Resources principles and applicable federal and state regulations (FMLA, ADA, FLSA, NLRA, etc.)
• Strong competency with HCM systems
• Demonstrated ability to influence senior executives and stakeholders without relying on formal authority
• Experience coaching and developing talent
• Ability to develop and maintain collaborative working relationships with executives, managers, employees, and union representatives
• Strong analytical skills and experience using workforce data to identify trends, evaluate risk, and support decisions
• Strong judgment and the ability to provide clear recommendations in complex, sensitive, or ambiguous situations
• Ability to work independently and with little supervision
• Extraordinary discretion, confidentiality, flexibility, and willingness to work closely with a cross-functional team
• Proficiency in GSuite, Slack, Zoom, Excel, Apple computers, and other tools used to support a remote-work environment
• Attention to detail and the ability to work independently and in a team environment
• Ability to work effectively in a distributed, remote-first environment

Desired Skills

• Experience supporting a government contractor, professional-services organization, consulting organization, technology company, or project-based workforce
• Experience working in a unionized environment or supporting labor-relations matters
• Experience with Workday HCM
• Experience supporting organizational redesign, workforce restructuring, mergers, acquisitions, or other significant organizational changes
• Experience with job architecture, compensation administration, talent reviews, succession planning, or workforce analytics
• Experience supporting leaders in a rapidly evolving and scaling organization