Principal Program Manager, WHS Strategy, Workplace Health and Safety
Amazon is hiring a Principal Program Manager, WHS Strategy, Workplace Health and Safety in Arlington, United States. It pays $125k-$169k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Amazon.
Level's read on this job
- Level rates this role Little AI ●○○○: aI is not part of the work.
- Tools and skills the posting cites include computer vision, strategic planning and executive communications.
- Level classifies it as a lead role.
- Level lists 21,000+ other open roles at Amazon.
- The role was posted within the past week.
AI in this role
Principal Program Manager leading WHS strategy, executive communications, and safety operational performance planning for Amazon's global network.
We are seeking a Principal Program Manager to lead the WHS Strategy team. This is a high-visibility leadership role at the intersection of enterprise strategy, executive communications, and operational safety performance. The leader in this position will serve as the primary owner of WHS's strategic planning cycle and will be accountable for the quality, coherence, and timeliness of the safety narrative presented to Amazon's most senior executives, including VP, SVP, and Board-level audiences.
This role requires a strategic leader who is effective under pressure, comfortable navigating organizational complexity, and capable of exercising sound judgment on matters with broad impact. The right candidate brings deep experience partnering directly with executive leadership, the ability to bring structure to ambiguous problems, and a consistent track record of delivering on high-stakes commitments. A core requirement is the ability to take complex, technical safety programs and communicate them with clarity and simplicity to audiences ranging from front-line operators to Board members. Exceptional written and verbal communication skills are not a differentiator for this role; they are a baseline requirement.
Key job responsibilities
This leader will own the end-to-end strategic planning lifecycle for WHS, including the development of 1 to 3 year strategic roadmaps, annual operating plans (OP1/OP2), and recurring executive reviews at monthly, quarterly, and annual cadences. Specific accountabilities include:
Collecting, synthesizing, and integrating strategic inputs from WHS teams across the organization, then drafting that content into a single, unified voice that reflects the WHS leader's perspective, ensuring consistent messaging, tone, and narrative alignment from document to document.
Authoring and managing the portfolio of WHS executive-level documents, ensuring analytical rigor, narrative precision, and strategic alignment across every deliverable that represents WHS to senior leadership.
Partnering with operations, engineering, and technology organizations across Amazon to integrate health and safety priorities into their strategic plans, influencing outcomes without direct authority.
Designing and governing the mechanisms through which safety data is reported to leadership, including ownership of data lock processes that ensure consistency and accuracy across all executive-facing materials.
Identifying opportunities to modernize how safety performance data is visualized, shared, and consumed by decision-makers at every level, raising the standard for insight-driven reporting.
Managing the enterprise planning calendar and orchestrating cross-functional inputs from a broad coalition of WHS field teams, central program teams, and operations stakeholders globally.
Translating complex operational programs, technical initiatives, and nuanced safety concepts into clear, concise, and accessible content for executive and non-specialist audiences.
A day in the life
You are a results-oriented leader with a genuine intellectual curiosity about what drives safety performance in complex operational environments. You combine strategic thinking with operational discipline: you can frame a multi-year vision and then build the mechanisms to bring it to life. You are comfortable being the person in the room who is expected to have the answer, and you hold yourself to that standard.
You bring a data-driven approach to every decision, an instinct for continuous improvement, and the organizational fluency to move work forward across teams that do not report to you. You are energized by ambiguity, not paralyzed by it. You communicate with clarity and economy, recognizing that at the executive level, every word carries weight. You are ready to own the strategic direction of safety for one of the world's largest employers and to ensure that direction is understood, aligned, and acted upon from the front line to the boardroom.
This is an in-office role requiring five days per week on-site. Travel is expected at 10 to 20 percent annually.
About the team
The WHS Strategy team functions as the connective tissue between WHS's technical and operational organizations and Amazon's executive leadership. The team builds and manages the mechanisms through which WHS compiles, creates, and refines the strategic planning and reporting documents that represent safety performance at the highest levels of the company. This is the program management group that owns the majority of WHS executive-level content and serves as the central authority for safety data and narrative consistency across Amazon.
The team operates as a trusted, high-credibility point of contact for a large global network of senior and executive stakeholders. The work is inherently cross-functional, requiring the ability to synthesize competing inputs, reconcile inconsistencies in data or direction, and produce a unified strategic view under tight timelines. The team's output directly shapes how Amazon's senior leaders understand and act on safety.
Basic qualifications
- 5+ years of cross functional project delivery experience
- 5+ years of program or project management experience
- 7+ years of working cross functionally with tech and non-tech teams experience
- Experience using data and metrics to drive improvements
- Experience in written and verbal communication skills to communicate with technical and non-technical audiences, including senior leadership
- Bachelor's Degree in Occupational Safety, Environmental Sciences, Engineering, Communications, Supply Chain or related field of study.
Preferred qualifications
- MBA
- Experience defining and executing program requirements
- Experience managing, analyzing and communicating results to senior leadership
- 6+ years of increasing responsibilities in EHS or environmental programs in manufacturing, production, or service operations experience, or Bachelor's degree
Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status, disability, or other legally protected status.
Our inclusive culture empowers Amazonians to deliver the best results for our customers. If you have a disability and need a workplace accommodation or adjustment during the application and hiring process, including support for the interview or onboarding process, please visit https://amazon.jobs/content/en/how-we-hire/accommodations for more information. If the country/region you’re applying in isn’t listed, please contact your Recruiting Partner.
The base salary range for this position is listed below. Your Amazon package will include sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs). Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, qualifications, and location. Amazon also offers comprehensive benefits including health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line, Flexible Spending Accounts, Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage), 401(k) matching, paid time off, and parental leave. Learn more about our benefits at https://amazon.jobs/en/benefits.
USA, TN, Nashville - 124,900.00 - 169,000.00 USD annually
USA, VA, Arlington - 137,600.00 - 186,200.00 USD annually
USA, WA, Bellevue - 137,600.00 - 186,200.00 USD annually
How we rate this
Principal Program Manager, WHS Strategy, Workplace Health and Safety at Amazon rates 20 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Little AI (AI Level 1 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Little AI. AI is not part of the work.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Questions you could be asked
- Walk me through a computer vision problem you solved, from raw data to a deployed model.
- Tell me about a project where strategic planning was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where executive communications was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where program management was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where cross functional leadership was part of your work. What did you do?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: Computer vision, Strategic Planning, Executive Communications, Program Management, and Cross Functional Leadership. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
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