Skills Architecture Specialist

Imagine Your Future with Us! Since 1971, Paychex has been at the forefront of simplifying HR, payroll, and benefits for American businesses. Our digital HR technology and advisory solutions cater to the changing needs of employers and their employees. With our award-winning training and endless opportunities for growth and development, you can build a lifelong career with us. We pride ourselves on fostering an inclusive and innovative culture. Our leaders are here to support your career journey; they and our dedicated employees embody the values that drive us to support each other, our clients, and our communities. Join us to pursue your passion and unleash your potential.
Overview

As a Skills Architecture Specialist within the Talent Management function, you will serve as a subject matter expert responsible for the design, development, governance, and ongoing maintenance of the organization's skills frameworks and job architecture components. This role is highly execution-focused, building structured, scalable skills taxonomies and role frameworks while ensuring consistency through defined standards, governance practices, disciplined data management, and sustainable operating practices.
Working closely with Talent Management, Total Rewards, HR Technology, and cross-functional partners, you will translate established workforce strategies into repeatable, system-ready frameworks that can be integrated into tools and technologies. You will play a key role in ensuring skills and taxonomy structures are designed for interoperability, enabling true integration across platforms and supporting the operationalization of skills at scale within the business. Your work will ensure skills and job architecture are aligned, usable, and embedded across systems and processes, enabling role clarity, supporting internal mobility, and preparing the organization for future capabilities such as a skills marketplace.
Responsibilities

• Develop skills architecture while partnering with Total Rewards and Talent Management to align skills architecture with job architecture, influencing role clarity, leveling, and career pathways while supporting shared governance and adoption across teams and the talent life cycle.

• Build and maintain an enterprise skills taxonomy, including hands-on creation, ongoing maintenance, and regular updates in partnership with business leaders. Ensure skills remain relevant through continuous iteration rather than static refreshes. Use data-driven insights to inform reskilling, upskilling, and talent deployment strategies.

• Maintain job families, levels, and role definitions that support clarity, equity, and mobility, working closely with Total Rewards for benchmarking and Talent Acquisition for role consistency. Partner with Workforce and BI Analytics teams to shape reporting and analytics that enable business and HR leaders to make informed workforce decisions using skills and proficiency data.

• Build and evolve role frameworks that align with the skills of the future, including AI fluency, digital agility, and human-machine collaboration. Partner closely with stakeholders across HR and the business to enable data-informed reskilling and redeployment pathways across the enterprise (AI, workforce changes, etc.)

• Partner with HR Technology and cross-functional teams as multiple best-in-class workforce platforms are implemented, helping map how these tools connect through a shared skills architecture. This role ensures alignment of data models, integrations, and use cases so the overall ecosystem functions as a cohesive skills-enabled foundation.

• Serve as a partner to senior business leaders, HR partners, and Talent teams, to embed skills and competencies into development, performance, and career growth processes.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Human Resources Management - Required
• in Organizational Development Industrial-Organizational Psychology Business Administration (MBA) Data Analytics or Workforce Analytics (with HR emphasis)
• 8 years of experience in Talent Management, Organizational Design, or HR Strategy.
• 5 years of experience in Deep expertise in job architecture, skills mapping, and competency modeling at enterprise scale. .
• 5 years of experience in Experience with talent systems (e.g. Workday, SuccessFactors, Degreed, Eightfold). .

Live the Paychex Values

• Act with uncompromising integrity.

• Provide outstanding service and build trusted relationships.

• Drive innovation in our products and services and continually improve our processes.

• Work in partnership and support each other.

• Be personally accountable and deliver on commitments.

• Treat each other with respect and dignity.

What's in it for you?

• We value your well-being: We provide over 21 comprehensive rewards, including medical coverage, virtual wellness classes, tuition reimbursement, 401(k) + employer match, adoption assistance, financial assistance, and much more.
• We value your time: From paid time off to company holidays, culture days, and comprehensive work-life balance programs, we will ensure you have the flexibility you need to be your best.
• We value your development: Our award-winning training and development programs empower our employees with ongoing learning opportunities to give you the building blocks to grow your career.
• We value your perspective: Our company culture reflects the diversity of our employees. We want you to be you and your voice to be heard.
• We value our communities: We offer paid time off for volunteerism and promote many company-wide and local initiatives that benefit organizations you care about.

Note: The benefits described apply to full-time employees. Benefits for part-time, contract, and intern roles may vary.


Not sure if you meet every requirement?
At Paychex, we know that great talent comes in many forms. If you're passionate about the role but don't check every box, we still encourage you to apply. You might be the right fit - either for this position or another opportunity with us.
Paychex is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to fostering a respectful and inclusive workplace where all individuals are treated fairly and evaluated based on their qualifications, experience, and merit. We comply with all applicable federal, state, and local laws prohibiting discrimination in employment.