Principal Analyst, Change Management at Vail Resorts in Vail, CO, US

Job description

• Come work and play in the mountains! Whether it’s your first-time seeing snow or you were born on the slopes, joining our team means discovering (or re-discovering!) a passion for the outdoors while building lifelong connections with teammates and guests from around the world.
• With 40+ resorts across 3 continents, you can join our team for a season or stay to build a career. From day one, you'll receive some of the highest compensation rates in the industry, free Epic pass(es) along with free ski and snowboard lessons, 40% retail discounts, the chance to grow through Epic Service - our leading training and development experience, and wellness benefits to fuel your success.
• Candidates for year-round positions are reviewed on a rolling basis. Applications will be accepted up to 90 days after the posting date, or until the position is filled (whichever is first).
• Reporting to the VP, Mountain Operations COE, the Senior Manager, Change Management is responsible for designing and executing end-to-end change strategies for Mountain Operations, including Centers of Excellence initiatives, transformation priorities, and operational changes impacting resorts. To be successful in this role, you must be agile -- able to transition quickly between strategic design and effective execution. Success requires strong operational judgment, stakeholder influence, execution discipline, and the ability to translate strategy into simple, repeatable routines that improve adoption across resort types. This person will need to approach change and transformation with an enterprise mindset and the ability to differentiate effective change approaches based on the unique needs of our different employee groups and various lines of business.

Responsibilities

• Lead Mountain Division Change Management and ensure COE initiatives, enterprise programs, and transformation efforts are integrated, sequenced, and successfully adopted across resorts through leader-led change capability. Lead the design and execution of change strategies that support large-scale transformation to drive differentiated business outcomes for our mountain operations.
• Work across stakeholders and teams to strategize, design, manage, and support change to drive faster adoption, higher ultimate utilization of changes, and proficiency with the changes that impact employees who must use the changes in their daily work.
• Build adoption plans that improve leader and manager readiness to execute priority changes, with a focus on ensuring solutions are deployed in a way that is clear, practical and executable for resorts
• Use resort feedback, adoption data, and operational signals to identify execution risks, surface barriers, and trigger targeted support or intervention where adoption is not progressing. Design and execute engagement plans across various channels to drive awareness and desire, and build the skills and abilities needed to sustain long term change across stakeholder groups.
• Define adoption measures, monitor execution progress, identify where solutions are not landing, and feed insights back to drive continuous improvements. Provide thought partnership to team members and mountain operations senior leaders, actively sharing opinions and feedback regarding the direction of change efforts.

Requirements

• Change Management: Experience and knowledge of change management principles, methodologies, and tools and applies them pragmatically in service of adoption and execution
• Adoption and Execution Discipline: Able to move from strategy to action by defining practical deployment plans, leader routines, adoption measures, and follow-through mechanisms.
• Operational Judgment: Distinguishes signal from noise, understands what matters most to resort execution, and makes practical tradeoffs in ambiguous environments.
• Business and Ops Acumen: Grounds recommendations in how work gets done in the field, and how change impacts leaders, managers, and frontline teams.
• Stakeholder Influence: Builds credibility quickly, aligns action without formal authority, sets clear expectations, and holds partners accountable to agreed outcomes.
• Field-Ready Communication: Simplifies complex work into clear messages, leader talking points, action plans, and tools that help operational teams execute.
• Agility and Learning Orientation: Adjusts approach based on feedback, balances continuity with evolution, and improves the system over time.
• Integrated Planning: Connects work across COEs, Training, Operational Insights, Workforce Management, HR, Communications, and resort stakeholders to clear action and outcomes
• Project Management: Ability to manage multiple projects at once while navigating a complex and matrixed global organization. Highly organized and detail oriented.
• Emotional Intelligence: Excellent interpersonal skills and comfort interacting with individuals across and at all levels of the organization. Demonstrated commitment to understanding and incorporating the perspectives of a diverse set of stakeholders. Comfortable navigating tension and recognizing risk.
• Self-Driven: Initiative and ability to work independently, meeting challenges with a can-do attitude.
• Microsoft Office: PowerPoint skills a must; responsible for building visually digestible slides and content that bring stakeholders on a journey.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience
• 5-7 years of experience in change management, business transformation, operations enablement, HR or organizational effectiveness

Skills

Required

• Stakeholder Influence
• Emotional Intelligence
• Self-Driven
• Agility and Learning Orientation
• Microsoft Office: PowerPoint

Benefits

• Ski/Mountain Perks! Free passes for employees, employee discounted lift tickets for friends and family AND free ski lessons
• MORE employee discounts on lodging, food, gear, and mountain shuttles
• 401(k) Retirement Plan
• Employee Assistance Program
• Excellent training and professional development
• Referral Program
• Health Insurance; Medical Insurance, Dental Insurance, and Vision Insurance plans (for eligible seasonal employees after working 500 hours)
• Free ski passes for dependents
• Critical Illness and Accident plans
• The expected pay range is $110,000.00 -$133,441.00 +annual bonus. This is the pay range we reasonably expect to pay for this position. Individual compensation decisions are based on a variety of factors.