HR Product Engineer

World Strides is the global leader in educational travel and experiential learning. The company was founded in 1967 to provide middle school travel programs to Washington, D.C. and has grown to provide a wide range of programs for more than half a million students annually to over 100 countries around the world. World Strides offers experiential learning programs in educational travel, performing arts, language immersion, career exploration, service-learning, study abroad, and sports.

Each of these experiences helps students to see beyond the classroom and to see the world – and themselves – in new ways.

Job Description:

The HR Product Engineer is a hybrid builder who finds the highest-leverage problems inside the HR function, prototypes working solutions with AI-assisted development, and partners with IT engineering to secure deployment approval and ongoing production support.

This is a Product Engineer role scoped to HR. Part product manager, part developer, part HR domain expert. Embeds with HRBPs, Talent Acquisition, Total Rewards, People Ops, and L&D to find where HR can create value, then builds it. That value might be a job architecture platform, an automated comp band tool, a smarter recruiting workflow, or an AI-assisted decision support system for HRBPs.

Owns the outcome, not the ticket.

• Embed with HR stakeholders to understand how work actually gets done and where the real opportunity is: an unmet HRBP need, a missing capability, a manual process ready for automation.
• Identify and frame opportunities, then qualify them: is the problem material, real, measurable, and feasible to build.
• Build the case for the work. Quantify the prize (hours saved, error reduction, faster cycle time, better HRBP or employee experience) and pressure-test it with Finance and HR leadership before committing build time.

• Design and build both front-end and back-end capabilities to support HR proof-of-concept and pilot work. Example: a job architecture platform for HRBPs to manage job titles, descriptions, compensation bands, and job levels.
• Use AI-assisted development to move fast. Speed and learning matter more than polish at the POC stage.
• Embed AI directly into HR workflows: automation of manual tasks, decision support tools, chatbots, predictive analytics where the use case earns it.
• Connect prototypes to real systems of record (HRIS, ATS, M365/Dataverse) through approved integration patterns, reading and writing only via sanctioned product-owner requests.
• Run pilots with real HR users, instrument outcomes, and iterate against evidence.

• Build to meet IT's security, architecture, and support standards from day one, so deployment approval is a review, not a redesign.
• Partner with IT/engineering to secure deployment approval: security review, data governance sign-off, and production readiness within the org's SDLC.
• Retain ownership of the solution after launch. IT provides infrastructure, security, and support scaffolding, not a full transfer of accountability.
• Establish a clear support model with IT: who owns break/fix, who owns feature evolution, and the escalation path when something breaks.
• Document architecture, decisions, and data flows so IT can support confidently without you being the single point of failure.
• Ensure every solution meets data privacy, security, and compliance standards before it touches real HR data.

• Every project is a live R&D loop for the HR technology roadmap. Surface the patterns, edge cases, and insights that should shape it.
• Label the maturity of what you produce honestly: concept, preliminary, or committed. Directional work should never get mistaken for a commitment.
• Support change enablement so new tools get adopted, not just shipped. Adoption over mandate.
• Partner across HR functions and leadership levels, appreciating differing priorities and ways of working.

• Strong HR domain literacy: understands how work actually happens across HRBP, Talent Acquisition, Total Rewards, People Ops, or L&D.
• 3+ years in HR technology, HRIS administration, HR systems development,…