Director, Skills Strategy & Execution (Skills COE Lead)

Company Description

As the world’s leader in digital payments technology, Visa’s mission is to connect the world through the most creative, reliable and secure payment network - enabling individuals, businesses, and economies to thrive. Our advanced global processing network, VisaNet, provides secure and reliable payments around the world, and is capable of handling more than 65,000 transaction messages a second. The company’s dedication to innovation drives the rapid growth of connected commerce on any device, and fuels the dream of a cashless future for everyone, everywhere. As the world moves from analog to digital, Visa is applying our brand, products, people, network and scale to reshape the future of commerce.

At Visa, your individuality fits right in. Working here gives you an opportunity to impact the world, invest in your career growth, and be part of an inclusive and diverse workplace. We are a global team of disruptors, trailblazers, innovators and risk-takers who are helping drive economic growth in even the most remote parts of the world, creatively moving the industry forward, and doing meaningful work that brings financial literacy and digital commerce to millions of unbanked and underserved consumers.

You’re an Individual. We’re the team for you. Together, let’s transform the way the world pays.

Job Description

Are you a designer, builder, and change agent?  Are you passionate about creating a high-performance growth culture?  Are you motivated by a diverse and inclusive environment that unleashes the potential in everyone, everywhere?  

Come join the Global Talent team as we help write a new story for Visa and reimagine the world of work. 
We are seeking an experienced Director of Skills Strategy & Execution to lead an enterprise Skills Center of Excellence (COE). Reporting to the Vice President of Organization Design and part of our wider Global Talent team, this leader will architect and operationalize a company‑wide shift to a skills‑based talent model, in support of our Visa 2030 strategy. The Director will play a key role in shaping our organization’s future, by designing the frameworks, governance, and organizational mechanisms needed to deploy the right talent to the right work at the right time - and accelerating Visa’s productivity, agility, and employee career journeys.

The successful candidate will be responsible for driving overall strategy, and partnering with a wide range of People Team business and technology stakeholders to design skills solutions that suit Visa’s growth and needs.

We are looking for passion, strategic thinking, and strong collaborators, as well as subject‑matter expertise in designing and implementing skills-based approaches, and strong Workday Skills experience to facilitate configuration, governance, and implementation of an integrated skills technology platform.

Looking further ahead, the role will drive the embedding of skills into employee usage and mobility, business leader intelligence and resourcing, core talent processes, and strategic workforce planning – to drive the maximum impact and outcomes for our business, and our people.

Key Responsibilities

Enterprise Strategy, Architecture & Execution

• Serve as the primary enterprise architect and thought partner for designing and delivering the company’s end‑to‑end skills strategy.
• Advise senior leaders on integrating a skills lens into workforce planning, talent acquisition, upskilling, mobility, and career development.
• Serve as project owner for the enterprise skills roadmap—including data governance, deployment timelines, skills ontologies, and user experience.
• Champion the transition to skills‑centric practices across the organization, collaborating with and influencing leaders, HR teams, and functional stakeholders to seamlessly embed skills capabilities and tools across the full employee lifecycle—from hiring to performance to development, globally and regionally.

• Design and execute enterprise skills programs, taxonomies, and capability frameworks aligned to strategic business priorities, partnering with wider teams to drive adoption and alignment to enterprise goals.
• Lead cross‑functional teams and working groups to deliver skills‑related initiatives, identifying risks early and driving issue resolution.
• Maintain expertise in external skills technologies, AI/ML‑driven skills intelligence, and future‑of‑work trends; translate insights into actionable recommendations.
• Foster a culture of experimentation and iteration, ensuring programs continuously evolve based on business needs and user feedback.

Technology Design & Enablement

• Serve as the enterprise SME for Workday Skills—guiding configuration, governance, skills inference models, mapping, and data integrit