HR S&S Manager Latam & Brazil

Company Description

As a world market leader in crop protection, we help farmers to counter these threats and ensure enough safe, nutritious, affordable food for all – while minimizing the use of land and other agricultural inputs.

Syngenta Crop Protection keeps plants safe from planting to harvesting.  From the moment a seed is planted through to harvest, crops need to be protected from weeds, insects and diseases as well as droughts and floods, heat and cold.

Syngenta Crop Protection is headquartered in Switzerland.

Location: São Paulo.

Job Description

The HR Solutions & Systems Manager serves as a strategic and technical leader responsible for ensuring consistent and reliable performance outcomes across 18 countries, covering the regions of Brazil and LATAM. This role combines deep HR process knowledge with IT expertise to manage and evolve the HR technology landscape, including systems architecture, integrations, automation, and data governance.

Leading a team of HR S&S professionals, the manager fosters high performance and continuous improvement through process automation in HR operations, ensuring a seamless and secure employee experience. Hands-on involvement with APIs, middleware, server environments, and cloud-based platforms is essential to support scalable and compliant HR solutions.

The manager plays a dual role as both an HR strategist and a technical partner, actively engaging with the global and regional IT community to ensure alignment on architecture, infrastructure, and integration standards. This requires a deep understanding of IT functions such as API management, middleware orchestration, server environments (on-premises and cloud), data security, and system interoperability. By bridging HR and IT, the manager ensures HR solutions are user-centric, compliant, technically robust, scalable, and aligned with enterprise technology strategies.

Additionally, the role partners closely with HR and business stakeholders to enhance decision-making through advanced analytics, data governance, and the delivery of intelligent, automated solutions that elevate the employee experience.

Main Accountabilities:

• Lead a technically skilled HR S&S team in LATAM, composed of automation engineers, data analysts, and Workday functional experts, ensuring high performance, collaboration, and continuous development.
• Oversee the LATAM HR project portfolio, ensuring structured governance, visibility, prioritization, and optimal resource allocation across all initiatives.
• Represent LATAM needs in the Global HR Project Portfolio, advocating for regional priorities through robust business cases and alignment with global strategies.
• People analytics measures and metrics knowledge, deep experience in digital product management
• Ensure technical excellence in HR systems architecture, including integrations (APIs, middleware), automations (RPA, workflows), and infrastructure (cloud/on-premises environments), in close collaboration with IT.
• Act as a bridge between HR and IT, actively participating in the IT community to ensure alignment on system design, security, scalability, and compliance.
• Drive the deployment of new HR technologies and solutions, ensuring they are technically sound, aligned with business needs, and integrated into the global HR technology roadmap.
• Support HR Operations in M&A activities, leading the technical aspects of system integration, data migration, and continuity planning.
• Promote a culture of continuous improvement, enabling the team to independently lead and scale automation and analytics initiatives across the region.
• Ensure operational excellence in HR systems, maintaining system availability, data integrity, and compliance with internal controls and external regulations.
• Foster a high performing, engaged, and resilient team, coaching team members to grow their leadership and technical capabilities, while ensuring talent retention and succession planning.
• Partner with HR Business Partners, COEs, and HR Operations to deliver standardized, high-quality services and superior employee experience.
• Represent LATAM in global HR S&S committees, contributing to the strategic vision and evolution of the function.
• Ensure regional implementation of global initiatives, adapting them to local realities while maintaining consistency and compliance.
• Champion diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) principles in all team practices and decision-making.
• Promote HR analytics awareness and adoption, enabling data-driven decision-making through dashboards, insights, and predictive models.
• Benchmark with other regions and external organizations, identifying and implementing best practices and emerging technologies.
• Leds, the Global/LATAM HR technology roadmap and market trends.

WL5B

At Syngenta we are highly people focused – we look for professionals who are engaged, collaborative and excellent in execution. Leaders are expected to communicate effectively, develop teams and lead by example. Our industry and our function are changing rapidly so we are looking for new team members with a strong desire to develop themselves.

Qualifications

Education:

• Graduate in Administration, IT, HR, Engineering, or other co-related areas;

Languages:

• Fluent level of English;
• Fluent Level of Spanish;
• Fluent Portuguese.

Critical experience:

• 4 years’ experience as a technical leadership in HR Technology
  Proven experience leading multidisciplinary teams composed of automation engineers, data analysts, and Workday functional experts. Ability to guide technical discussions, make architectural decisions, and ensure delivery of scalable, secure, and integrated HR solutions.
• Hands-on Expertise with HRIS and Integrations
  Deep familiarity with Workday (Core HCM, Compensation, Talent, Absence, Recruiting) and its ecosystem, including EIB and Studio. Experience managing API-based integrations, middleware platforms, and cloud/on-premise infrastructure in partnership with IT.
• Project & Portfolio Management in Complex Environments
  Demonstrated ability to manage a regional HR project portfolio with structured governance, prioritization frameworks, and resource planning. Experience driving digital transformation initiatives across multiple countries and stakeholders.
• M&A and Business Continuity Planning
  Experience supporting HR systems and operations during mergers, acquisitions, or divestitures, including data migration, system harmonization, and risk mitigation.
• Data Governance and Analytics Enablement
  Strong background in data quality, security, and compliance (e.g., GDPR, LGPD, SOX). Ability to translate business needs into actionable insights through dashboards, KPIs, and predictive analytics.
• Strategic Partnership with IT and HR
  Active participation in IT governance forums and HR leadership teams. Ability to align HR technology strategy with enterprise architecture, security standards, and business objectives.
• Change Management and Continuous Improvement
  Experience fostering a culture of innovation and continuous improvement, enabling teams to lead automation and analytics initiatives independently. Skilled in change management, communication, and stakeholder engagement.
• Multicultural and Regional Leadership
  Experience operating in a matrixed, multicultural environment across LATAM. Ability to adapt global strategies to local realities while maintaining consistency and compliance.,
• HR Services Capabilities and ServiceNow Expertise
  Experience with HR service delivery models, including payroll, administration of benefits, Absence and data management. Own regionally ServiceNow for case management, workflow automation, and service catalog management. Ability to integrate ServiceNow with other HR systems to enhance service efficiency and user experience.

Additional Information

Skills and knowledge:

• Agile and innovative mindset and approach;
• Interpersonal relationships, influence, pro activity;
• Stakeholder management and partnership;
• People management and development;
• Continuous improvement and analytical mindset;
• Resilience in a dynamic and at times ambiguous environment, inspiring it in others;
• Can deliver through others, knowing when and how to delegate and grow others’ ownership and impact;
• Technology awareness/savvy;
• Workday (Core HCM, Compensation, Talent, Absence, Recruiting), SAP SuccessFactors (optional),
• Qliksense, Alteryx, Power BI, Excel (advanced), SQL (advanced);
• Microsoft Power Automate, RPA tools (e.g., UiPath or Automation Anywhere);
• Jira, Confluence, Microsoft Project, Smartsheet;
• Workday EIB, Workday Studio, APIs, Boomi (optional), SAP PI/PO;
• GDPR, LGPD, SOX compliance, Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), audit readiness;
• Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Outlook, Miro/Mural (for workshops), strong stakeholder management.

Beyond just believing in the power of diversity, Syngenta promotes an inclusive culture that includes differences in all its forms. We believe that the feeling of belonging allows people to become their best version, building an increasingly welcoming and productive environment.

All qualified candidates will be considered for our positions, without distinction of race, gender, age, nationality or disability.

Be part of a leading company that brings plant potential to life