[Hiring] HR Experience & AI Transformation Architect @Avalara

Role Description

Avalara makes tax compliance faster, easier, more accurate, and more reliable for businesses. We're now applying that same standard to how we run our own People & Culture (P&C) function, Avalara's term for Human Resources. A new internal team, AI Transformation & Operational Excellence, has been created to redesign how P&C delivers services to employees, managers, and the business, using AI and automation as core tools rather than afterthoughts.

This team's mandate is to rebuild P&C's processes and technology from the ground up:

• Not just make today's processes faster, but decide, process by process, what should be fully automated, what should be enhanced with AI, and what should remain human-led.
• This role owns that end to end: you dig into how a process actually works today, document it clearly, decide what belongs on each side of that automate/augment/human line, and then build or oversee the build of the solution.

The impact of this role is to completely reimagine how People & Culture's processes work:

• Building a genuinely strong operating model underneath P&C.
• Envisioning what the experience should be for each persona who touches it, including employees, people managers, candidates, the business, and P&C itself.

This role owns the process architecture, the operating model, and the vision for each solution.

• From there, the actual AI tool build can go either way: hand it to the People Technology (engineering) team to build, or build it yourself.
• You'll operate with significant autonomy on ambiguous, cross-functional problems, and be a trusted partner to P&C leadership and to Avalara's People Technology (engineering) leadership alike.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated experience doing architecture work for process: designing a target-state process and operating model end to end.
• Strong process aptitude: you can take a messy, real-world process, dig into how it actually works, and turn it into a clear, documented, step-by-step map.
• Deep, hands-on AI experience: real experience building or deploying AI agents and automations in a live operational environment.
• Hands-on experience with agentic AI specifically: building multi-step, tool-using AI agents, working with prompt design and LLM orchestration.
• Demonstrated judgment for deciding what should be fully automated, AI-augmented, or kept human-led.
• Comfort owning both ends of the build decision: building an AI agent or automation yourself when that's the right call.
• Direct experience with build-vs-buy decisions for software or AI tools.
• Experience partnering with software engineers through implementation: testing, deploying, and iterating.
• Experience sequencing large initiatives into phases that deliver value quickly.
• Strong communication skills: credible with engineers, understandable to business and operations stakeholders.

Requirements

• Get into the details of how a process actually works today through direct observation, data review, and conversations with the people doing the work.
• Build clear, step-by-step process maps and a prioritized list of pain points and gaps that others can act on.
• Gather baseline data on existing processes, such as cycle time, volume, and error rates.
• Reimagine what the process should look and feel like for each persona it touches.
• Turn that persona-based vision into a clear target state.
• Decide what's automated, augmented, or human for each step of a process.
• Translate that judgment into concrete technical requirements and specifications.
• Assess build-vs-buy for each opportunity.
• Design the target-state solution architecture for each process.
• Identify upstream and downstream impacts on other processes, systems, and teams.
• Own and maintain the AI & automation roadmap for the processes you're responsible for.
• Build ROI models and success measures for each tool or automation.
• Partner with P&C leadership to determine where each AI agent “reports into” within the P&C org structure.
• Help define how to assess an agent's performance.
• Maintain a current map of every agent and automation in production.

Benefits

• Total Rewards: In addition to a great compensation package, paid time off, and paid parental leave, many Avalara employees are eligible for bonuses.
• Health & Wellness: Benefits vary by location but generally include private medical, life, and disability insurance.
• Inclusive culture and diversity: Avalara strongly supports diversity, equity, and inclusion.