Global Director Human Resources Cochlear Implants
Sonova Group, California, MO, United States
Global Director HR for Cochlear Implants & Advanced Bionics
Accountable for end to end HR business partnering with the President CI BU and CI leadership team. This role is accountable for fit‑for‑purpose organization design, workforce planning, capabilities and talent build‑out, and culture/change adoption required for CI BU to enable market growth. The incumbent will role‑model future thinking, commercial HR: strong business acumen, high standards, and a deep commitment to people, transparency, accountability and highest performance.
In this role, you’ll partner closely with Regional/Country HRBPs/People Partners and HR shared services in the countries where CI teams are present for employee life cycle management.
Position located in Valencia, CA, CI HQ with full‑time presence at the site and 30% international travel, including CI's main locations globally.
Organizational Development and Transformation
Drive organizational effectiveness and business readiness to enable growth in CI BU.
Provide strategic organizational design guidance to CI BU leadership, ensuring structures and capabilities support business strategy, scalability, and efficiency.
Use data and employee insights to identify organizational bottlenecks and design interventions that improve agility, collaboration, and decision‑making.
Coach and challenge CI leadership on organization design, change leadership, talent, and complex employee relations topics.
Embed a culture of high performance, accountability/transparency/collaboration, customer excellence. Drive leadership accountability for employee engagement.
Talent, Skill and Leadership Development
Own CI BU talent and workforce strategy in partnership with HR CoEs: strategic workforce planning, critical roles, succession pipelines, and build/buy/borrow decisions (in partnership with Talent/TA COE).
Define and build future CI core unique capabilities (sales, marketing/product management, etc). Partner with global functional HRBPs to ensure the right R&D, Operations and Quality and Regulatory capabilities in line with CI BU strategy are available/ embedded in BU.
Strengthen leadership capability at all levels—combining future CI business expertise with high‑quality people leadership and team effectiveness.
Create career paths and capability journeys for key CI functions, enabling internal mobility, progression, and transparent development pathways.
Scale up‑skilling/reskilling through digital and blended learning solutions and targeted developmental experiences/development programs to enable a skills‑based organization, unique to CI BU strategy execution. Leverage to a maximum all of the Sonova solutions created in Talent and Org development COE. Optimize training and development budgets, focusing on impact and measurable outcomes.
Total Reward and Compliance
Partner with Group Total Rewards to ensure unique competitive, equitable and sustainable total rewards programs (with particular focus on sales incentives) within CI BU where relevant to CI BU strategy/competitiveness and partner with the Regional/Country HRBPs for local compensation practices in the markets where CI presence is limited.
Ensure a robust HR compliance framework adoption in CI BU in alignment with Group policies/governance and standards regional Sonova practices, employment regulations etc while allowing for CI BU innovation where it creates customer value in compliant way.
Digital HR and Process Excellence
In partnership with Global COEs, harmonize and simplify unique CI BU HR processes into fit for purpose, tech‑enabled journeys for employees and people leaders, balance global frameworks and BU specific needs. Drive continuous improvement of HR processes.
Drive adoption of Sonova standard HR digital tools, including self‑service, automation, and AI‑enabled solutions, to free up HR capacity for strategic work.
HR Team Leadership & Capability Building
Lead, coach, and develop, set collaborative ways of working for BU HR team, aligned with business strategy and Group HR direction.
Build contemporary HR Business Partnering capabilities (if relevant for specific BU HRBP roles), i.e. data literacy, consulting skills, change management and foster a culture of learning, experimentation, and continuous improvement within the team.
Role‑model cross‑functional collaboration, ensuring HR acts as “one team” across all Sonova presence in the Region.
More about you
10+ years in HR with significant time as a senior HRBP in customer‑facing business (industrial, retail, healthcare, consumer, etc), in a global matrix context.
Track record of executing people strategy in line with business strategy, directly impacting growth, profitability, innovation and transformation, experience in driving change during different business cycles (growth, turnaround, downsizing, etc).
Experience in organizational development, OD/structure design and change management in a full end‑to‑end business (i.e. from R&D to Sales/Service), as a minimum proven experience to manage the HR agenda for organization with strong product management lifecycle organization.
Demonstrated ability to build leadership pipelines, run talent and succession processes, and develop front‑line and mid‑level leadership at scale.
Experience shaping culture and improving engagement and retention, particularly in commercial organisations.
Comfortable with contemporary digital HR tools, experience with leveraging data and people analytics to drive decisions and influence leaders.
Strong influencing skills in global/matrix organizations, aligning Group, regional, country and functional stakeholders; proven track record to challenge and coach senior leaders with empathy and courage.
Strategic and commercially minded, yet very hands‑on.
High learning agility, resilience, and comfort with ambiguity.
A minimum of 200 Mb/sec download and 10 Mb/sec upload speed internet connectivity is required to support any remote/hybrid employee functionality at Sonova.
What we offer
Medical, dental and vision coverage*
Health Savings, Health Reimbursement, Flexible Spending/Dependent Care Accounts
TeleHealth options
401(k) plan with company match*
Company paid life/AD&D insurance
Additional supplemental life/AD&D coverage available
Company paid Short/Long‑Term Disability coverage (STD/LTD)
STD LTD Buy‑ups available
Accident/Hospital Indemnity coverage
Legal/ID Theft Assistance
PTO (or sick and vacation time), floating Diversity Day, & paid holidays*
Paid parental bonding leave
Employee Assistance Program (24/7 mental health support hotline, 5 company paid counseling sessions and more)
Robust Internal Career Growth opportunities
Hearing aid discount for employees and family
Internal social recognition platform
This role’s pay range is between $180,000/yr and $230,500/yr, depending on expertise and experience. This role is also bonus‑eligible.
Sonova is an equal opportunity employer. We team up. We grow talent. We collaborate with people of diverse backgrounds to win with the best team in the marketplace. We guarantee every person equal treatment in regard to employment and opportunity for employment, regardless of a candidate’s ethnic or national origin, religion, sexual orientation or marital status, gender, genetic identity, age, disability or any other legally protected status.
#J-18808-Ljbffr
In this role, you’ll partner closely with Regional/Country HRBPs/People Partners and HR shared services in the countries where CI teams are present for employee life cycle management.
Position located in Valencia, CA, CI HQ with full‑time presence at the site and 30% international travel, including CI's main locations globally.
Organizational Development and Transformation
Drive organizational effectiveness and business readiness to enable growth in CI BU.
Provide strategic organizational design guidance to CI BU leadership, ensuring structures and capabilities support business strategy, scalability, and efficiency.
Use data and employee insights to identify organizational bottlenecks and design interventions that improve agility, collaboration, and decision‑making.
Coach and challenge CI leadership on organization design, change leadership, talent, and complex employee relations topics.
Embed a culture of high performance, accountability/transparency/collaboration, customer excellence. Drive leadership accountability for employee engagement.
Talent, Skill and Leadership Development
Own CI BU talent and workforce strategy in partnership with HR CoEs: strategic workforce planning, critical roles, succession pipelines, and build/buy/borrow decisions (in partnership with Talent/TA COE).
Define and build future CI core unique capabilities (sales, marketing/product management, etc). Partner with global functional HRBPs to ensure the right R&D, Operations and Quality and Regulatory capabilities in line with CI BU strategy are available/ embedded in BU.
Strengthen leadership capability at all levels—combining future CI business expertise with high‑quality people leadership and team effectiveness.
Create career paths and capability journeys for key CI functions, enabling internal mobility, progression, and transparent development pathways.
Scale up‑skilling/reskilling through digital and blended learning solutions and targeted developmental experiences/development programs to enable a skills‑based organization, unique to CI BU strategy execution. Leverage to a maximum all of the Sonova solutions created in Talent and Org development COE. Optimize training and development budgets, focusing on impact and measurable outcomes.
Total Reward and Compliance
Partner with Group Total Rewards to ensure unique competitive, equitable and sustainable total rewards programs (with particular focus on sales incentives) within CI BU where relevant to CI BU strategy/competitiveness and partner with the Regional/Country HRBPs for local compensation practices in the markets where CI presence is limited.
Ensure a robust HR compliance framework adoption in CI BU in alignment with Group policies/governance and standards regional Sonova practices, employment regulations etc while allowing for CI BU innovation where it creates customer value in compliant way.
Digital HR and Process Excellence
In partnership with Global COEs, harmonize and simplify unique CI BU HR processes into fit for purpose, tech‑enabled journeys for employees and people leaders, balance global frameworks and BU specific needs. Drive continuous improvement of HR processes.
Drive adoption of Sonova standard HR digital tools, including self‑service, automation, and AI‑enabled solutions, to free up HR capacity for strategic work.
HR Team Leadership & Capability Building
Lead, coach, and develop, set collaborative ways of working for BU HR team, aligned with business strategy and Group HR direction.
Build contemporary HR Business Partnering capabilities (if relevant for specific BU HRBP roles), i.e. data literacy, consulting skills, change management and foster a culture of learning, experimentation, and continuous improvement within the team.
Role‑model cross‑functional collaboration, ensuring HR acts as “one team” across all Sonova presence in the Region.
More about you
10+ years in HR with significant time as a senior HRBP in customer‑facing business (industrial, retail, healthcare, consumer, etc), in a global matrix context.
Track record of executing people strategy in line with business strategy, directly impacting growth, profitability, innovation and transformation, experience in driving change during different business cycles (growth, turnaround, downsizing, etc).
Experience in organizational development, OD/structure design and change management in a full end‑to‑end business (i.e. from R&D to Sales/Service), as a minimum proven experience to manage the HR agenda for organization with strong product management lifecycle organization.
Demonstrated ability to build leadership pipelines, run talent and succession processes, and develop front‑line and mid‑level leadership at scale.
Experience shaping culture and improving engagement and retention, particularly in commercial organisations.
Comfortable with contemporary digital HR tools, experience with leveraging data and people analytics to drive decisions and influence leaders.
Strong influencing skills in global/matrix organizations, aligning Group, regional, country and functional stakeholders; proven track record to challenge and coach senior leaders with empathy and courage.
Strategic and commercially minded, yet very hands‑on.
High learning agility, resilience, and comfort with ambiguity.
A minimum of 200 Mb/sec download and 10 Mb/sec upload speed internet connectivity is required to support any remote/hybrid employee functionality at Sonova.
What we offer
Medical, dental and vision coverage*
Health Savings, Health Reimbursement, Flexible Spending/Dependent Care Accounts
TeleHealth options
401(k) plan with company match*
Company paid life/AD&D insurance
Additional supplemental life/AD&D coverage available
Company paid Short/Long‑Term Disability coverage (STD/LTD)
STD LTD Buy‑ups available
Accident/Hospital Indemnity coverage
Legal/ID Theft Assistance
PTO (or sick and vacation time), floating Diversity Day, & paid holidays*
Paid parental bonding leave
Employee Assistance Program (24/7 mental health support hotline, 5 company paid counseling sessions and more)
Robust Internal Career Growth opportunities
Hearing aid discount for employees and family
Internal social recognition platform
This role’s pay range is between $180,000/yr and $230,500/yr, depending on expertise and experience. This role is also bonus‑eligible.
Sonova is an equal opportunity employer. We team up. We grow talent. We collaborate with people of diverse backgrounds to win with the best team in the marketplace. We guarantee every person equal treatment in regard to employment and opportunity for employment, regardless of a candidate’s ethnic or national origin, religion, sexual orientation or marital status, gender, genetic identity, age, disability or any other legally protected status.
#J-18808-Ljbffr