Senior Director, Employee Engagement & Recognition

Senior Director, Employee Engagement & Recognition

Job
Business Unit: MTA Headquarters

Location:

New York, NY, United States
Regular/Temporary:
Regular
Department:
Employee Engagement& Retention

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is North America's largest transportation network, serving a population of 15.3 million people across a 5,000-square-mile travel area surrounding New York City, Long Island, southeastern New York State, and Connecticut. The MTA network comprises the nation’s largest bus fleet and more subway and commuter rail cars than all other U.S. transit systems combined. MTA strives to provide a safe and reliable commute, excellent customer service, and rewarding opportunities.

The Senior Director, Employee Engagement & Recognition is part of the Learning, Engagement and Development (LEaD) team as part of the People department and leads MTA‑wide efforts to elevate the employee experience throughout the full lifecycle—from onboarding through separation—by driving initiatives that foster engagement, belonging, purpose, and organizational pride. This role oversees the design and execution of enterprise engagement frameworks, including Day 1/30/60/90 onboarding, continuous feedback mechanisms, and robust engagement and recognition programs.

It partners closely with HR leaders across operating and administrative divisions to ensure a consistent, unified approach to engagement.

Serving as a strategic advisor to senior leadership, the Senior Director plays a key role in shaping organizational culture and steering enterprise‑wide engagement and recognition strategies that celebrate employee contributions. The position integrates core functions—including orientation, recognition, employee feedback, and lifecycle experience—into a cohesive engagement model that enables leadership's ability to drive engagement across their teams, and fosters connection, clarity, and organizational alignment.

Working in close partnership with the People Department, senior leadership, and executive staff, this role designs and implements impactful strategies and tools that champion a workplace culture where employees feel valued, supported in their growth, and recognized for their achievements. With a focus on strengthening retention and enhancing the experience of more than 70,000 employees, the Senior Director ensures a seamless, engaging, and meaningful journey for employees at every stage of their MTA career.

• Lead, mentor, and develop a high performing Employee Engagement & Recognition team, set departmental goals, drive programmatic operational excellence, and manage cross agency relationships to ensure consistent service delivery while creating a professional environment
• Oversee the design, delivery, analysis and refinement of employee engagement initiatives, programs and external partnerships, day-one, 30, 60, 90 and year-one onboarding program, leadership and management toolkits, engagement and pulse check surveys, exit interview data, and recognition programs, working with People Analytics to interpret trends and drive strategic recommendations.
• Partner with leaders to design recognition programs including spot and peer-to-peer recognition, years of service recognition, performance recognition, and major annual events such as all agency appreciation programs, that are meaningful, inclusive, and aligned with ongoing development of recognition initiatives.
• Collaborate with senior leadership, HR Business Partners, and Communications to ensure employee engagement narrative and messaging resonates with both operations and non-operations staff by facilitating engagement task forces, cross functional committees, and working groups to standardize best practices…