Senior Program Manager, People Experience Strategy & Ops

Senior Program Manager, People Experience

Own Talent Operations initiatives and capacity planning to support scalable hiring across teams at Zoox

Location: Foster City, California

Compensation: $165,000 - 199,000 USD / year

About The Role

Senior Program Manager

Zoox is seeking an experienced Senior Program Manager to join our People Experience (PEx) team, serving as PEx PMO's strategic partner to our Talent Acquisition organization. This role owns the planning, reporting, and vendor infrastructure that lets Talent hire efficiently and confidently at scale — from hiring capacity models to executive reporting to our large-scale industry conference presence. We're looking for someone with strong program management skills and real Talent Acquisition operations experience who can build the systems Talent leadership relies on to make good decisions. As PEx's needs evolve, this person will also be expected to take on new projects and departments beyond Talent.

Responsibilities

• Program & Project Leadership: Lead Talent Operations initiatives end-to-end — including the Referral Rewards Program, requisition administration, process improvement efforts, and tooling rollouts.
• Strategic Translation & Execution: Own enterprise Hiring Goals capacity planning methodology, translating business growth targets into concrete hiring plans in partnership with Talent leadership and HRIS.
• Event & Conference Operations: Own end-to-end planning and execution for large-scale industry conferences (e.g., CVPR), including budget, vendor management, and operational logistics — plus lighter-touch support for smaller industry events. Interviewing & Enablement Support: Provide light-touch support for interview standardization (playbooks, calibration) and Talent enablement initiatives (onboarding curriculum, SOPs) as needed.
• Stakeholder Engagement & Cross-Functional Alignment: Serve as the primary point of contact between PEx PMO and the Talent organization, partnering closely with Recruiting leadership, HRIS, and Legal to ensure alignment across initiatives. Talent Tooling & Vendor Management: Own relationships with core Talent tooling vendors (Lever, Gem, LinkedIn, ModernLoop, and others), partnering on tool roadmap decisions and budget/contract planning.
• Governance & Reporting: Own executive-facing reporting, including the Monthly Hiring Report, and partner with HRIS on data governance and quality for Talent's Workday-based reporting infrastructure.

Initiative-Based Responsibilities

• Hiring Goals & Capacity Planning: Build and maintain the methodology Zoox uses to plan hiring capacity against business growth targets — one of the most complex, least-documented pieces of Talent's operating model today.
• AI in Talent: Partner with Legal/Employment Law on the responsible adoption of AI tools and processes within interviewing and recruiting — a high-sensitivity, cross-functional initiative requiring careful, thoughtful execution.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of relevant program management experience, with a focus on Talent Acquisition operations, recruiting program management, or workforce/hiring capacity planning.
• Proven experience designing and delivering scalable operational programs in a fast-paced environment.
• Strong functional expertise in recruiting/TA systems and tooling (e.g., Lever, Gem, LinkedIn Recruiter, or equivalent).
• Analytical and problem-solving skills, with demonstrated experience building data-driven planning models.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with a proven track record of influencing senior leaders and stakeholders.
• Experience partnering with Legal, Compliance, or similar functions on sensitive, high-visibility initiatives.
• Strong group facilitation and presentation skills across a variety of formats.
• Experience planning and executing large-scale conferences, corporate events, or offsites, including budget and vendor management.

$165,000 - $199,000 a year Base Salary Range