Job Description
Idaho National Laboratory is hiring a Senior Power Platform & Automation Engineer to work in HR's Product Experience & Insights team, which is part of HR Operations.
At Idaho National Laboratory, you will play a critical role in empowering the HR professionals who recruit, develop, and support the world-class researchers and scientists driving the nation's nuclear energy and national security missions. By ensuring HR teams have modern tools, streamlined processes, and intelligent systems, your work directly enables Idaho National Laboratory to attract and retain the talent that makes its mission possible. As a senior member of the HR Product Experience & Insights team, you'll meet directly with HR teams to understand how work actually happens, then design and build the PowerApps, Power Automate workflows, Power BI dashboards, and AI-powered solutions that make their hardest problems disappear. You'll mentor junior engineers, evaluate whether automation or a new system is the right fix, and own solutions end to end from first conversation through delivery and ongoing support.
You'll be the person other engineers on the team learn from. You'll directly meet with HR teams to understand how they work and what they need. Then, pairing AI engineering with the Microsoft Power Platform, you’ll build the apps, automations, and dashboards that make their hardest processes and problems dissolve. You'll change customers’ worlds, turning “this is how we've always done it” into “I can’t believe we used to do it that way.” Yet not every fix is something you build, as sometimes the right solution is a new system that needs to be acquired, and you're just as comfortable owning it and running that to ground. The solutions you build don't stay in one team's corner, they ripple across and impact a workforce of 6,400+.
The HR Product Experience & Insights (PEI) team is forged to refine how HR operates. PEI works like an internal digital creative agency, built around a single ethos: are we making it easier to be an employee, a manager, and an HR professional at INL, and can we prove it? PEI consolidates five disciplines: Systems Strategy, Business Analysis, Automation Engineering, UX Research & Design, and Data Analytics. You're joining a small group wearing multiple hats, closer to a team of superheroes than a five-department org chart. The Power Platform & Automation Engineer roles provides PEI's build engine, translating the team's discovery work into delivered application and automation products.
You observe teams closely to discover how work actually happens. You've learned from experience that the nitty-gritty details of work often remain unknown or misunderstood, yet these details can be what matters most. You’ll document customer needs via wireframes, diagrams, or user stories, whatever facilitates rapid understanding and consensus. From there, you iterate through tangible drafts and honest feedback, aiming for a minimum viable product instead of a fully nailed-down requirements set. That's agile, not waterfall. You will remain present through delivery, checking in throughout the short cycles instead of disappearing and reappearing at the end. Skip these methods, and we risk automating a bad process, which is the same bad process, just faster.
Here's your superpower: you're not a one-trick automation pony. You understand the business well enough to know that not every need is automation. Sometimes the right fix is a workflow. Sometimes it's recognizing that a new HR system is the real answer, and when that's the case, you’re all over it: vetting the options, meeting with internal HR teams to gather requirements, working directly with vendors, and staying engaged through implementation, so the actual underlying problem gets solved.
This role owns solution delivery, with the Microsoft Power Platform as the default toolset: PowerApps, Power Automate, and Power BI. But the platform serves the solution, not the other way around. When the problem calls for a Python web app in Django or Flask, a .NET service, or even the discovery of an appropriate 3rd party solution, you’ll own the path there too (sometimes teaming up with IT devs). Layered on top is real AI engineering: Python, generative AI, prompt engineering, and agentic automation through tools like Microsoft Copilot Studio, Claude, and other custom platforms as the work demands.
We are hiring for this role because demand for continual optimization and systems replacement across HR is real and only growing. None of this is order-taking: success means the people you serve end up more efficient, produce higher-quality work, and genuinely enjoy their jobs more, not just that a ticket got closed.
Essential Job Functions & Responsibilities
Discovery & Business Analysis
- Meet face-to-face and observe how work actually happens, not just how it gets described. What people say they do and what they actually do are often different, and the nitty-gritty details left out are often the insights that matters most.
- Elicit and document requirements through interviews and working sessions, translating what a team asks for into what they actually need. “Documented” might mean a wireframe, a diagram, or a user story, whatever is clear enough to execute on without having to rely on tribal knowledge.
- Wireframe and prototype early and throughout using tools like Lucid or Figma for process maps, wireframes, and data modeling when it helps, so stakeholders are reacting to something tangible within days, not approving a written spec weeks before anything visible exists.
- Catch a bad process before automating it as automating a bad process doesn't solve anything.
- Stay with the customer through delivery, checking in on working builds at short, regular intervals, refining requirements as understanding deepens rather than locking them in at kickoff and signing off.
- Understand full workstreams, not just isolated requests, and proactively surface opportunities to streamline them, increasing efficiency, quality, and job satisfaction for the people doing the work every day.
- Vet whether automation or a new system is the right fix, and when it's the latter, meet with internal HR teams to gather requirements, work directly with vendors, and stay engaged through implementation so the actual underlying problem gets solved.
- Work with process owners across HR (CHRO, Talent Acquisition, Talent Development, Employee Success, Compensation, Benefits, and more) to plan and sequence solutions against real backlogs, not hypothetical requests.
- Collaborate closely with PEI’s other disciplines: Systems Strategy, UX Research & Design, and Data Analytics so nothing you build recreates the silos PEI exists to remove.
Build & Engineering
- Mentor more junior automation engineers and others in best practices.
- Design and build PowerApps, including apps embedded in SharePoint sites that give HR teams and employees intuitive products rather than inefficient processes.
- Evaluate a business process and determine optimal approach whether automation, a new system, or something else entirely is the right fix, not just "gather requirements and build"
- Ownership of catching a bad process before automating it
- Work with IT and others to establish difficult to obtain data connectors and custom connectors for integrating with enterprise systems and databases.
- Develop automated workflows and RPA solutions in Power Automate that remove manual, repetitive, and low-resiliency-to-error steps from HR operations.
- Build Power BI dashboards and reports that surface the metrics that matter to a given audience, from an HR specialist to the CHRO, Senior Leadership Team, and Lab Director.
- Apply AI and agentic automation, combining Python, generative AI, and prompt engineering with tools like Microsoft Copilot Studio, custom GPTs, Claude, and Power Automate to design intelligent, self-serve solutions, not just static workflows.
- Reach beyond the Power Platform when the problem calls for it, building custom solutions in Python frameworks (Django, Flask), .NET, or other languages and platforms when a low-code approach isn't the right tool for the job.
- Partner with the team's UX designer to ensure what you build isn't just functional, but the entire experience is modern, consistent, polished, and genuinely pleasant to use.
- Maintain critical documentation for what you build, so solutions remain supportable and owned by PEI rather than any one person.
Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor’s Degree and 9 years of experience building production solutions on the Microsoft Power Platform (PowerApps, Power Automate, Power BI), or equivalent low-code/full-stack development experience or a Masters degree and 6 years of experience OR a HS diploma and 15 years of experience building production solutions on the Microsoft Power Platform (PowerApps, Power Automate, Power BI), or equivalent low-code/full-stack development experience.
- Genuinely personable, one-on-one with a customer, not just capable behind a screen: comfortable being the face of a solution from first conversation through delivery and support.
- Demonstrated experience leading stakeholder discovery and requirements elicitation independently, from first conversation through delivered solution.
- Proficiency in DAX for building measures, calculated columns, and data models within Power BI.
- Experience with observational research methods (job shadowing, contextual inquiry, or similar) to validate what people say they do against what they actually do.
- Skilled in documenting requirements, process flows, and user stories in a way both stakeholders and future team members can follow.
- Experience delivering work in short, iterative cycles with frequent stakeholder check-ins (agile, Scrum, Kanban, or similar), adjusting scope as understanding deepens rather than locking requirements at the start.
- Hands-on experience applying generative AI, prompt engineering, or agentic automation (e.g., Microsoft Copilot Studio, custom GPTs, Claude, or similar platforms) to real business workflows.
- Proficiency in Python for automation, data manipulation, and extending low-code platforms beyond their native capabilities.
- Working knowledge of SQL and experience integrating Power Platform solutions with relational databases (MS SQL) and APIs.
- Track record of owning a solution end to end: scoping, building, testing, deploying, and supporting it.
- Comfort mentoring less experienced team members and reviewing their build work.
The Ideal Candidate Will Also Bring
- Mentoring other teammates in automation efforts and best practices.
- A genuine innovator's mindset: you don't stop at solving the problem in front of you, you look at the surrounding workstream and ask what else could be streamlined.
- A builder's mindset: you'd rather prototype something in an afternoon and iterate than spend a week in requirements documents.
- Enterprise development experience outside the Power Platform, such as Python web frameworks (Django, Flask), .NET, or other languages and platforms, for the times a custom-built solution is genuinely the better answer. Not required, but a strong plus.
- Experience with HR systems data or platforms (HRIS, ATS, case management); familiarity with Oracle HCM, Oracle Recruiting Cloud, JobVite, Qualtrics, etc.
- Experience working side-by-side UX Designers, Business Analysts, and Data Analysts.
- Experience with SharePoint site development and administration.
- Familiarity with Power Query (M language) for data transformation within Power BI.
- Experience with Lucid (Lucidchart, Lucidspark) or Figma for process mapping, wireframing, or data modeling.
- Comfort owning your domain in a small, high-impact team where individual accountability is high and cross-functional collaboration is constant.
- The instinct to anticipate future needs and questions, not just the one in front of you.
- May be required to obtain and maintain a security clearance depending on assignment.
Job Information
The pay range for this position is: Level 4-Salary Grade 450 ($95,256- $195,288). At Idaho National Laboratory compensation decisions are determined using factors such as education, relevant experience, and other credentials.
Physical Requirements
While performing the duties of this classification, the employee is frequently required to stand, walk, sit, stoop, kneel, bend, use hands to handle materials, manipulate tools, keyboard, and type, reach with hands and arms, and operate job-related equipment. The employee must occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds. Sufficient visual acuity and hearing capacity to perform the essential functions and interact with people is required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.