Principal Manager, People Operations Business Partner

About Nava

Nava is a consultancy and public benefit corporation working to make government services simple and effective. Since 2015, federal, state, and local agencies have trusted Nava to help solve highly scrutinized technology modernization challenges.

As a client services company, we guide agencies constrained by legacy systems to a future with sharp user experiences built on secure, reliable, fault-tolerant cloud infrastructure. We bill for our time, offering our expertise and problem-solving approach to help our government partners enhance their digital products and services. People are at the heart of our work, from members of the public who rely on benefit programs to government agency staff. Through human-centered design and modern engineering best practices, we help our government partners understand user needs and deliver on their missions more effectively. This focus gives everyone at Nava the opportunity to do work that is meaningful, impactful, and deeply connected to public good.

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.

The Principal Manager 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. This role co-owns the enterprise frameworks: workforce planning, career pathing, and organizational design standards that POBP’s use to advise business leaders, and ensures those frameworks remain consistent, equitable, and aligned with Nava's mission.

As Nava evolves toward an AI-native operating model, the Principal Manager, People Operations Business Partners sets the strategic point of view on how artificial intelligence and automation will change roles, skills, team structures, and management practices, and equips the POBP team to guide leaders through that change responsibly, balancing efficiency gains with employee trust, equity, compliance, and sound human judgment. Working closely with People Operations leadership, Finance, Legal, Talent Acquisition, and business operations leaders, the Manager ensures that people strategy and POBP practice are financially responsible, legally compliant, operationally practical, and aligned with Nava's values.

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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 the 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 build 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