Regional Chief Human Resources Officer — Engineering Centre

The mandate

A Budapest engineering centre is redesigning how global businesses are charged for specialist teams, laboratories and retained capability. The draft model makes workforce cost more visible but risks treating people as interchangeable units. Scarce controls, embedded-software and validation skills carry different market prices and development horizons; some capacity must exist before a sponsor needs it. Employee representatives are also asking how the model will influence location, role and redundancy decisions.

The newly created Regional Chief Human Resources Officer will lead people strategy across approximately 925 employees and material partners within a services perimeter of about HUF 130 billion. The role covers organisation, workforce economics, reward, talent acquisition, employee relations, capability and succession. Finance owns chargeback mechanics and engineering leaders own service choices. The CHRO must ensure their decisions use credible people assumptions and meet employment obligations.

This is not a narrow consultation role. The appointee must determine which skills require strategic capacity, what flexibility is realistic, how premiums should be funded and whether proposed productivity depends on unacknowledged work intensification. The result should permit transparent service economics without weakening Budapest’s engineering proposition.

The centre also draws talent from universities and an established regional supplier ecosystem. Decisions about graduate intake, apprenticeships and contingent specialists have consequences several years beyond the pricing cycle. The CHRO must identify which pipelines protect future capability, define the productive supervision they require and ensure their cost is visible without being cut as unused capacity. Where services request instant flexibility, the people plan should make the resulting premium, knowledge and continuity trade-offs explicit.

Workforce data use will require discipline. Skills and utilisation records can improve allocation but may influence careers or selection in ways employees do not expect. The CHRO will establish access, correction and challenge routes, involve privacy and works bodies early and prohibit opaque scoring from becoming an unreviewed employment decision.

Why this seat is open

The chargeback work exposed a regional people-accountability gap that the current country HR manager cannot fill alongside existing duties. The board created an urgent new seat so workforce design enters the commercial model before it is approved. There is no predecessor or hidden replacement. Selection is targeted within eight weeks, subject to complete consultation and diligence.

What you will own

• Build a role, skill, proficiency and cost model that distinguishes strategic capability from fungible capacity.
• Advise finance on salary, premium, vacancy, training, bench and restructuring assumptions in service prices.
• Lead consultation with employee representatives on workforce consequences and decision principles.
• Establish rules for moving employees between sponsor-funded teams without compromising contract, career or pay fairness.
• Create market and internal-equity approaches for scarce engineering disciplines.
• Test productivity cases for workload, overtime, learning and manager-capacity effects.
• Design succession and development for principal engineers, programme leaders and critical technical managers.
• Provide independent people-risk advice before location, outsourcing or service-tier decisions.

The first 12 months

In the first 60 days, the CHRO will reconcile roles, skills, pay, vacancies and funded demand and identify assumptions likely to distort the chargeback. By day 90, finance and engineering will have approved workforce principles, employee representatives will understand the proposed process and no individual action will precede formal decisions.

Months four to nine will pilot the model in two service groups with different scarcity and demand profiles. The CHRO will correct unjustified pay anomalies, create mobility rules and establish training investment for capabilities the centre chooses to retain ahead of demand. Any restructuring will follow transparent selection and consultation.

At year-end, 90% of roles should map to approved skill and proficiency standards, pivotal-skill attrition should remain below 8% and workforce forecast variance should be under 7%. Internal movement should fill 30% of priority vacancies, and the new chargeback should have no substantiated discrimination or consultation breach.

What the board will measure

• People economics that improve pricing choices without reducing employees to headline hourly cost.
• Employee-relations quality and lawful, timely consultation.
• Retention and succession in capabilities chosen for strategic investment.
• Workforce productivity grounded in sustainable role and workload design.
• Transparent mobility, reward and selection decisions across sponsor-funded teams.

The person

You are a Regional CHRO, engineering people leader or workforce-transformation executive who has linked talent decisions to service economics. You understand European employment consultation and can challenge both finance simplification and engineering exceptionalism. Relevant experience includes engineering centres, industrial technology, R&D and skilled global services.

You bring 18–22 years of experience and have led people strategy for at least 650 employees within an accountable perimeter of HUF 75 billion or more. Evidence should include a cost-model or sourcing choice changed by workforce facts and a consultation in which employee input materially improved implementation.

The role is onsite in Budapest with regional travel.

Compensation and terms

Base compensation is HUF 95–130 million plus annual incentive. Performance combines workforce economics, pivotal retention, capability depth, forecast and employee-relations integrity. Headcount reduction is not a standalone measure. Final terms depend on experience and current mix, and the urgent process remains subject to appropriate consultation and diligence.

Confidentiality

The employer, engineering disciplines, representative bodies and proposed charging mechanics are confidential. More specific information follows candidate qualification and an undertaking. Published figures are rounded and must not be used to infer the identity of the Budapest centre.