Principal, Workforce Management

Role Description

We are seeking a Principal, Workforce Management to evolve our strategic capacity and workforce planning across the organization. This role combines deep expertise in capacity planning, forecasting, and resource optimization with broader leadership in workforce strategy and WFM best practices.

You will act as a thought leader and subject matter expert, shaping how we forecast demand, allocate resources, scale operations efficiently, and measure the effectiveness of both digital and human-led initiatives on our operations. You will build and operationalize scenario planning frameworks and “what if” analyses to assess demand variability, staffing impacts and cost implications. This role goes beyond execution—driving innovation, synthesizing complex data into strategic insights, influencing senior stakeholders, evolving capacity models, and linking WFM strategy to business performance. You won’t just improve existing systems—you’ll define what great looks like for WFM at Zillow.

What you’ll do:

• Advance Zillow’s WFM strategy for evolving CX operations.
• Lead the design and execution of demand forecast and scenario-based capacity planning models for nascent products, new lines of business, and non-traditional contact center scenarios to predict future staffing requirements, considering factors like seasonality, business growth, evolving technology integration and project pipelines.
• Establish scalable frameworks for forecasting, capacity planning, and resource optimization across multiple channels (voice, chat, email, ticketing, etc), incorporating non-human driven resources into future cost models (API calls, automated SMS texts, etc).
• Engage with program and business partners, data science, operations, vendor management and finance teams to align on assumptions, inputs, and outputs for capacity planning models.
• Serve as the enterprise subject matter expert for capacity planning, forecasting, and workforce strategy, ensuring consistent methodology and alignment across all planning teams.
• Act as a consultant for new business and/or models.
• Develop and implement strategic workforce plans that align with organizational goals across different time horizons, including identifying opportunities for AI and automation to enhance efficiency.
• Evaluate and introduce new technologies, automation, and AI-driven planning approaches to improve forecasting methodologies (regression, multi-variable simulation, LLM/AI models and other advanced techniques as appropriate).
• Define and measure the impact of both digital and human-led initiatives on capacity inputs, providing clear, actionable insights to leadership on risks, trade-offs, and opportunities.
• Drive continuous improvement of WFM practices, with a focus on the application of AI/ML to improve accuracy and efficiency.
• Act as a trusted advisor to senior leadership on workforce strategy and operational readiness.
• Consult cross-functionally to shape the hiring, budgeting and operational strategy decisions for complex, ambiguous initiatives spanning multiple teams and systems.
• Role model best-in-class workforce planning practices, setting the standard for analytical rigor, strategic thinking, and decision-making across the WFM team.

This role has been categorized as a Remote position. “Remote” employees do not have a permanent corporate office workplace and, instead, work from a physical location of their choice, which must be identified to the Company. U.S. employees may live in any of the 50 United States, with limited exceptions.

In California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Washington state, and Washington DC the standard base pay range for this role is $131,700.00 - $210,300.00 annually. This base pay range is specific to these locations and may not be applicable to other locations.

In Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia the standard base pay range for this role is $125,100.00 - $199,900.00 annually. The base pay range is specific to these locations and may not be applicable to other locations.

In addition to a competitive base salary this position is also eligible for equity awards based on factors such as experience, performance and location. Actual amounts will vary depending on experience, performance and location. Employees in this role will not be paid below the salary threshold for exempt employees in the state where they reside.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in workforce management, capacity planning, or contact center analytics.
• Deep expertise in forecasting, staffing models, and contact center operations.
• Advanced skills in data analysis (SQL, Excel; Python/R a plus).
• Proven ability to influence senior stakeholders and drive alignment across teams.
• Experience operating in complex, high-volume, multi-product, multi-channel environments.
• Familiarity with contact center WFM tools (Aspect preferred).

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in Operations, Finance, Business Administration, or a related quantitative field.
• Background in financial planning or operations strategy.
• Experience introducing new methodologies or transforming WFM functions.
• Experience in measuring the impact of new processes on contact center operations and customer experience metrics.
• Ability to travel up to 15% as needed.

Who you are

• An integrator who thinks in systems: connect the details of individual business plans into a unified narrative, transforming data, financial models and workforce insights into enterprise-wide strategies.
• Operate in ambiguity: Tackle loosely defined problems, building structure when none exists and creating clarity and direction to drive high-impact planning decisions.
• Lead thru influence: shape decisions through expertise, not authority.
• Think big: Design future-oriented, scalable strategies that balance customer experience, operational productivity, and cost-effectiveness while addressing current operational requirements.
• Raise the bar: shape how workforce planning is done, not just executing within existing frameworks, but driving long-term vision and transformation.