Principal Human Resources Business Partner

Department: Human Resources

Classification: Administrative Faculty

Job Category: Administrative or Professional Faculty

Job Type: Full-Time

Work Schedule: Full-time (1.0 FTE, 40 hrs/wk)

Location: Fairfax, VA

Workplace Type: Hybrid Eligible

Sponsorship Eligibility: Not eligible for visa sponsorship

Salary: Salary commensurate with education and experience

Criminal Background Check: Yes

We are not just filling a role. We are launching a new era of HR partnership at George Mason University.

Introducing the Principal HR Business Partner — the first role in our new centrally managed, field-deployed HR Business Partner model and one of the most consequential HR positions we have ever built.

This is a principal-level appointment. That word matters. It is a statement of seniority, mastery, and enterprise accountability. We are not looking for someone who manages HR. We are looking for someone who transforms how HR shows up at the highest levels of a major research institution.

Human Resources serves as the university’s strategic partner in advancing institutional effectiveness through people — developing and implementing strategies, policies, and services that support the recruitment, development, engagement, and retention of a high-performing workforce across a Carnegie-classified R1 institution.

The Opportunity

The Principal HR Business Partner will sit alongside vice presidents, deans, and senior leaders — not as a support function, but as a true strategic partner. A thought leader. A change agent. A workforce architect who can see around corners, challenge assumptions, and help George Mason’s leadership build the organization it needs to fulfill its mission.

This is a director-level individual contributor role with enterprise impact. It partners directly with senior leaders to translate institutional priorities into effective organizational structures, talent strategies, and workforce plans — helping George Mason modernize how work is designed, how talent is developed, and how leadership capability is strengthened across a large and complex research institution.

Serving as lead strategic partner for cabinet and division-level portfolios as assigned, this role advances George Mason’s Workforce of the Future strategy — ensuring the university’s workforce remains agile, high-performing, and aligned with evolving academic, research, and operational priorities.

“The Principal HR Business Partner is not about maintaining an existing structure. It is about building one.”

What Does Principal-Level HR Partnership Look Like at GMU?

• Transformational workforce strategy — advancing George Mason’s Workforce of the Future agenda by connecting people, culture, and leadership capability to long-term institutional performance. Because institutions do not perform — people do.
• Enterprise change leadership — driving organizational effectiveness, workforce realignment, and structural transformation across complex, matrixed academic and administrative portfolios.
• Executive-level influence — serving as a trusted advisor and strategic enabler to senior leadership, shaping decisions that impact colleagues and the institution’s long-term trajectory.
• Systems integration — serving as the primary bridge between institutional leadership and our full suite of HR Centers of Excellence, mobilizing the right expertise at the right moment to solve the right problems.
• Data-driven insight — translating workforce analytics into leadership intelligence, surfacing what leaders need to see before they know to ask for it.

“This is not a role for someone who wants to administer HR. It is a role for someone who wants to reinvent how HR leads.”

Essential Functions:

Organizational Effectiveness & Workforce Planning

• Drive the design and alignment of organizational structures and workforce models across supported portfolios, strengthening organizational effectiveness and advancing Workforce of the Future priorities.
• Lead coordinated organizational design, restructuring, and workforce realignment initiatives within supported portfolios, aligning organizational structures with institutional