Workforce Planning Systems Lead

Arcadis is the world's leading company delivering sustainable design, engineering, and consultancy solutions for natural and built assets.

We are more than 34,000 people, in over 30 countries, dedicated to improving quality of life. Everyone has an important role to play. With the power of many curious minds, together we can solve the world’s most complex challenges and deliver more impact together.

Role description:

The Workforce Planning Systems Lead will be responsible for enabling the efficient, scalable, and data-driven workforce planning by ensuring Workforce Planning systems, tools, and capabilities are fit for purpose, adopted by users, and continuously improved to support workforce planning outcomes.

Role accountabilities:

• Own the vision, strategy and multi-year roadmap for the enterprise Workforce Planning product ecosystem, linking investment and release priorities to measurable workforce planning outcomes and business value.
• Maintain an outcome-based product roadmap and lifecycle plan, covering discovery, business cases, dependencies, technical debt, releases, decommissioning and future capability investments.
• Define and govern Workforce Planning system standards, decision rights, governance requirements, operating procedures, and expected user practices across regions and business areas.
• Own prioritization of Workforce Planning system requirements using value, risk, regulatory need, user impact, architectural alignment and delivery capacity; resolve conflicts across competing stakeholder needs.
• Approve business requirements, testing outcomes, and user acceptance in accordance with agreed governance processes.
• Own Workforce Planning system performance, reliability, availability, adoption and user experience, ensuring appropriate remediation of recurring or critical issues.
• Establish and maintain a governance framework for Workforce Planning systems, ensuring alignment between business objectives, technology delivery, and user needs.
• Ensure systems support global workforce planning objectives, forecasting, scenario modelling, reporting requirements, and operational needs.
• Accountable for ensuring Workforce Planning systems deliver business value, support workforce planning processes, and meet user needs through effective product ownership and continuous improvement to shape scalable enhancements.
• Lead product discovery and continuous improvement, combining user research, process analysis, data insights and technical feasibility to shape scalable enhancements rather than isolated local customizations.
• Define business requirements and partner with Technology and Data teams to deliver effective Workforce Planning solutions. Lead product discovery and continuous improvement, combining user research, process analysis, data insights and technical feasibility to shape scalable enhancements rather than isolated local customizations.
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives through process simplification, automation, and standardization.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and capabilities to enhance Workforce Planning operations. Partner with Enterprise Architecture and engineering teams to ensure solution designs align with approved architecture patterns, identity and access controls, integration standards, security requirements and technology roadmaps.
• Define Workforce Planning data requirements and oversee integration between Workforce Planning and enterprise systems. Assess emerging technologies, vendor capabilities and market options through structured discovery, proof-of-concept and total-cost/value evaluation.
• Own the Workforce Planning data product requirements, including data definitions, lineage, ownership, quality rules, retention, access and reconciliation across source and consuming systems.
• Partner with data owners to establish data governance standards, controls, and quality requirements.
• Ensure interfaces and data pipelines are observable, secure, resilient and supportable, with agreed service levels, monitoring, error handling, reconciliation and recovery procedures.
• Partner with data owners and stewards to establish data governance, master/reference data controls, metadata standards and measurable data quality thresholds.
• Lead resolution of cross-system data integrity issues, ensuring root causes are addressed at source and impacts on workforce planning decisions are clearly communicated.
• Establish support models, governance processes, and operational procedures for Workforce Planning systems.
• Act as the escalation point for critical system issues impacting workforce planning operations.
• Support successful delivery of workforce planning outcomes with the WFP team.
• Promote standardization and consistency across workforce planning processes and tools.
• Maintain compliance with enterprise architecture, data governance, privacy, cybersecurity, accessibility, records management, procurement and technology risk policies, and drive a culture of accountable product ownership and continuous improvement.

Qualifications & Experience:

• Typically 8+ years of experience in enterprise product ownership, business systems, data-enabled transformation or technology delivery, including 3+ years owning a complex product or platform used across multiple functions, regions or business units.
• Demonstrated experience owning an enterprise product strategy, roadmap, backlog and lifecycle, with evidence of prioritizing investment, managing technical debt and delivering measurable business outcomes.
• Deep knowledge of workforce planning data structures, reporting frameworks and governance principles, with the ability to ensure data quality, consistency and effective use of workforce information across the organization.
• Demonstrated experience working with technology teams, external vendors and business stakeholders to design, implement and enhance workforce planning system capabilities that align with business objectives.
• Experience translating business requirements into system solutions, collaborating with technical teams to prioritize enhancements, resolve issues and deliver continuous product improvements.
• Strong understanding of product ownership principles, with experience managing product backlogs, defining priorities and balancing business needs with technical delivery to maximize business value.
• Experience leading change management and user adoption initiatives, ensuring successful implementation of new systems, processes and ways of working through effective stakeholder engagement, communication and training.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to evaluate business processes, identify improvement opportunities and implement technology enabled solutions that enhance workforce planning performance.
• Excellent stakeholder management and influencing skills, with the ability to build trusted relationships and collaborate effectively with business leaders, operational teams, technology partners and vendors across a matrixed organization.
• Strong communication and facilitation skills, with the ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly and support informed decision making across technical and non technical audiences.
• Leadership style that promotes collaboration, accountability, innovation and continuous improvement, aligned with the Arcadis Leadership profile of being curious, driving success and igniting passion.
• Degree level education in Information Systems, Business Administration, Computer Science, Engineering, Data Management or another relevant discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• Professional certification preferred in product management, business analysis, project management or a related discipline, together with significant experience delivering workforce planning systems and technology enabled transformation initiatives.

Why Arcadis?

We can only achieve our goals when everyone is empowered to be their best. We believe everyone's contribution matters. It’s why we are pioneering a skills-based approach, where you can harness your unique experience and expertise to carve your career path and maximize the impact we can make together.

You’ll do meaningful work, and no matter what role, you’ll be helping to deliver sustainable solutions for a more prosperous planet. Make your mark, on your career, your colleagues, your clients, your life and the world around you.

Together, we can create a lasting legacy.

Join Arcadis. Create a Legacy.

Our Commitment to Equality, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging

We want you to be able to bring your best self to work every day, which is why we take equality and inclusion seriously and hold ourselves to account for our actions. Our ambition is to be an employer of choice and provide a great place to work for all our people.