Talent Partner

October 21, 2026
San Francisco, CA, US
Know someone at UC San Francisco Academic?
Opens a LinkedIn search of your own network. We never see your connections.

Job Summary

The Talent Partner is a senior individual contributor within Organizational Effectiveness, reporting to the Director, Organization Design & Effectiveness. Each role is aligned to two to three UCSF operating units and serves as the primary Talent & Organizational Effectiveness relationship and engagement lead for those areas, building a strong understanding of business priorities, operating realities, organizational challenges, and the portfolio of OE work underway.
The role combines broad organizational effectiveness consulting capability with strong project and program management. It helps leaders frame organizational needs, distinguishes symptoms from underlying issues, coordinates the right OE expertise, and manages complex engagements from intake through implementation and review. The Talent Partner does not need to be the deepest subject-matter expert in every OE discipline; it is accountable for keeping the customer relationship and integrated engagement coherent while drawing on specialist expertise in organization design, transformation, culture, team effectiveness, talent, learning, and future-of-work innovation as needed.
The role works across UCSF Health and Campus, including clinical, operational, research, education, and administrative environments, and must be credible with leaders operating complex, frontline-intensive and highly regulated systems.

This role is main point of contact for the business units and their HRBP to our function. Lead integrator for OE support to its assigned business units. Success means business leaders have a trusted Talent Partner who understands their priorities, brings the right expertise to the right problems, and ensures engagements are well framed, coordinated, delivered, and followed through. The Talent Partner maintains an integrated view of OE demand and work across assigned business units, surfaces patterns and emerging needs, and helps the Director deploy scarce OE capacity against the highest-value priorities. The role is aligned to the business but deployed by OE; it does not function as dedicated embedded capacity or replace HR Business Partners. It owns the continuity and integration of the engagement while specialist consultants retain accountability for the technical depth of their disciplines.

Department Summary

The Organizational Effectiveness function within Human Resources develops leaders, strengthens organizations, optimizes talent systems, and advances innovative approaches that enable UCSF's people and mission to thrive. The Organization Design & Effectiveness pillar serves UCSF Health and Campus as an enterprise consulting and transformation capability, helping hospitals, clinical and operational teams, research and academic units, and administrative functions improve performance by ensuring the full suite of Talent solutions, offers, products, tools and experiences are leveraged and ultimately imbedded in the Operating Units. Work secondarily encompasses organization design, transformation, culture, team effectiveness, and disciplined execution.

| | | |
| --- | --- | --- |
| % of time | Essential Function (Yes/No) | Key Responsibilities (To be completed by Supervisor) |
| 30% | Yes | Operating Unit POC • Serve as the primary OE relationship and engagement lead for three assigned business units and their respective HRBPs, developing a strong understanding of their strategies, operating environments, leadership priorities, and organizational challenges. • Bring our Talent Offer to the Operating Unit and manage the OU engagement in our Talent and Leadership Initiatives. - Maintain an integrated view of OE demand, active engagements, emerging needs, and dependencies across assigned business units. • Conduct initial discovery and problem framing, using broad OE knowledge and systems thinking to clarify needs before determining the appropriate intervention or specialist support. • Identify recurring themes and enterprise-level opportunities and surface them to the Director for prioritization and capacity decisions. • Partner closely with HR Business Partners while maintaining clear distinction between HRBP accountability and OE specialist support. |
| 30% | Yes | Integrated Engagement & Project Management • Own the end-to-end coordination of Talent offers, processes & tools. Work with Talent SMEs across our department, including scope, outcomes, workplans, milestones, stakeholders, risks, dependencies, decisions, and follow-through. • Assemble and coordinate cross-pillar OE expertise when an engagement requires organization design, transformation, culture, talent, learning, leadership, or future-of-work capabilities. • Keep the overall customer engagement coherent when multiple specialists contribute, ensuring clear roles, handoffs, communication, and accountability. • Anticipate barriers, escalate material risks and trade-offs, and maintain momentum across complex, matrixed initiatives. • Use disciplined project and program management practices without allowing process to substitute for sound organizational diagnosis and judgment. |
| 20% | Yes | Organizational Diagnosis & Solution Integration • Use interviews, stakeholder input, workforce and operational data, observation, and systems thinking to help distinguish presenting requests from underlying organizational issues. • Frame problems in terms of structure, leadership, work, teams, culture, talent, operating model, or other organizational factors and engage the appropriate subject-matter expertise. • Integrate recommendations across OE disciplines into practical solutions that fit the business context and support operational performance. • Work with leaders and specialists to translate recommendations into clear implementation actions, ownership, and sequencing. |
| 10% | Yes | Implementation, Change & Stakeholder Coordination • Support implementation of OE recommendations by coordinating stakeholders, communications, decisions, adoption activities, and dependencies. • Maintain strong relationships with business leaders, HR partners, and OE specialists throughout the engagement lifecycle. • Ensure leaders understand what is changing, what is required of them, and where decisions or sponsorship are needed. • Help transition completed work into sustainable business ownership rather than creating ongoing dependence on OE. |
| 10% | Yes | Measurement, Review & Portfolio Learning • Partner with OE Strategic Operations & Impact team and Talent SMEs to establish intended outcomes and practical success measures for priority work. • Monitor engagement progress and outcomes, surface evidence of what is or is not working, and support post-implementation review. • Capture lessons, patterns, and reusable practices from operating-unit work and feed them back into the OE practice. • Use portfolio evidence to recommend where work should continue, adapt, scale, or conclude. |
| 100% | | (To update total %, enter the amount of time in whole numbers (without the % symbol - e.g., 15, 20) then highlight the total sum at the bottom of the column and press F9. The total sum should add up to 100%.) |

Required

  • Bachelor's degree in organizational development, business, human resources, project/program management, healthcare administration, or a related field, and/or equivalent experience.
  • 4 years of progressive experience in organizational effectiveness, internal consulting, program/project management, transformation, or related work in complex organizations.
  • Broad organizational effectiveness knowledge with the judgment to frame complex organizational needs and identify when specialist expertise is required.
  • Strong project and program management capability across complex, multi-stakeholder initiatives.
  • Demonstrated consulting and relationship-management skills with senior leaders and HR partners.
  • Strong systems thinking, organizational diagnosis, problem framing, and analytical capability.
  • Ability to integrate multiple disciplines and recommendations into a coherent business solution.
  • Exceptional organization, follow-through, communication, facilitation, and stakeholder-management skills.
  • Experience working with frontline-intensive, operational, clinical, academic, research, or other complex work environments.
  • Demonstrated experience managing complex cross-functional engagements from problem framing through implementation and review.

Preferred

  • Master's degree or higher in a related field.
  • MP, Prosci, Agile, organization design, facilitation, or related certifications.
  • Experience in healthcare, academic medicine, higher education, or another highly regulated 24/7 operating environment.
  • Working knowledge of organization design, change, culture, talent, learning, and/or workforce effectiveness practices.