# Compensation Manager

**Company:** [Fluidstack](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/fluidstack)
**Location:** New York, NY, Austin, TX, San Francisco, CA
**Role:** People Ops
**Salary:** $184k – $276k/yr
**Experience:** 4+ years
**Skills:** Compensation Planning, Market Benchmarking, Radford, Mercer, Levels.Fyi, Compensation Modeling, Pay Equity Analysis, Incentive Design, Equity Programs, Performance Cycle Support
**Posted:** 2026-06-18

> Compensation Manager who owns end-to-end comp planning, market benchmarking, and incentive design while partnering with leadership to build tools and frameworks that support talent decisions. Requires 4+ years of compensation experience and strong analytical skills.

## Job Description

## What You'll Do
- Partner strategically with the business: Work directly with leadership and department heads as a trusted compensation advisor — understanding their goals, challenging assumptions, and bringing market data and competitive intelligence that sharpen their thinking on pay strategy.
- Drive compensation planning: Own annual and off-cycle comp planning processes end-to-end, ensuring alignment between business strategy, talent priorities, and budget — and stay hands-on through execution.
- Build tools that serve the business: Design and maintain compensation tools, models, and resources that support cross-functional needs — from offer decisioning and leveling guidance to performance cycle support — making it easier for People, Finance, and leadership to act with confidence.
- Own market research and intelligence: Conduct rigorous, ongoing competitive benchmarking and market analyses using tools like Radford, Mercer, or Levels.fyi. Translate research into practical, actionable guidance.
- Build and refine compensation programs: Leverage department-level expertise to design, benchmark, and continuously improve compensation and incentive structures that are competitive against top AI, infrastructure, and tech companies.
- Support performance cycles: Partner with People and leadership to ensure compensation inputs into performance and review cycles are accurate, consistent, and aligned to strategy.
- Operate as a data-driven function: Build and maintain compensation models, reporting cadences, and dashboards that surface the right insights — pay equity, offer competitiveness, retention risk — and drive smarter decisions.

## What We Value
- You are both strategic and tactical — you can set the vision for a compensation program and still build the model yourself.
- You bring scientific rigor to your craft: your market research is methodical, your models are defensible, and your recommendations are grounded in evidence.
- You build tools people actually use. You've designed compensation resources, calculators, or frameworks that cross-functional teams rely on to make faster, better decisions.
- You've supported performance cycles end-to-end and understand how compensation intersects with review processes, calibration, and promotion decisions.
- You translate complexity into clarity. You can take a dense comp model and explain it simply and confidently to a senior leader or a hiring manager making their first offer.
- You measure what matters — pay equity, offer competitiveness, retention risk — and use data to make better decisions.

## Must Haves
- 4+ years of experience in compensation or a related HR function, with demonstrated ownership of comp planning cycles and program design.
- Proven ability to drive compensation planning transitions in alignment with business and talent strategy.
- Experience partnering with cross-functional stakeholders to build and refine compensation programs, with deep knowledge of at least one competitive talent market (tech, AI, infrastructure, or similar).
- Strong analytical skills — you build and maintain complex compensation models and can translate outputs into clear recommendations for senior leaders.
- Track record of leveraging market data (Radford, Mercer, Levels.fyi, or similar) to benchmark and calibrate pay structures.

## Nice to Have
- Background at high-growth tech companies or startups, preferably in AI, cloud/infrastructure, or data centers.
- Experience designing incentive and equity programs, including a strong understanding of private vs. public equity frameworks.
- Exposure to comp work in a pre-IPO or rapid-scaling environment.

## Salary & Benefits
- Competitive total compensation package (salary + equity).
- Retirement or pension plan, in line with local norms.
- Health, dental, and vision insurance.
- Generous PTO policy, in line with local norms.
- The salary range for this position is $184000 - $276000 per year, depending on experience, skills, qualifications, and location. Total compensation may also include equity in the form of stock options.

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