# Head of Compensation

**Company:** [Clay](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/clay)
**Location:** New York, NY
**Role:** People Ops
**Salary:** $225k – $275k/yr
**Experience:** 8+ years
**Skills:** compensation strategy, salary structures, market benchmarking, variable compensation, equity compensation, sales incentive plans, compensation cycles, leveling frameworks, people operations, Revenue Operations, compensation tooling
**Posted:** 2026-06-24

> Owns Clay's compensation function, designing salary structures, variable-pay and equity programs, compensation cycles, and supporting tooling. The role requires 8+ years of hands-on compensation experience, strong technical expertise, excellent communication, and sound judgment in a scaling environment.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities

### Philosophy and Architecture
- Own Clay's compensation philosophy and salary structures, evolving them as the company scales.
- Build pay programs aligned with Clay's business, talent market, and stage.
- Own market benchmarking and survey strategy to keep compensation bands current, defensible, and competitive.
- Partner on go-to-market compensation, including variable-pay and incentive structures for revenue-generating teams.
- Build the system of record for compensation, documenting what Clay pays, why it pays it, and how the programs connect.

### Programs and Cycles
- Design and run compensation cycles, including reviews, promotion and adjustment decisions, and offer approvals.
- Own equity program design and partner with Finance on administration.
- Partner with Revenue Operations on variable-compensation administration, ensuring plans are accurately implemented, calculated, and paid.
- Build compensation workflows and tooling, including offer visualization and recruiter-facing data lookups.

### Communication and Enablement
- Translate compensation concepts into clear guidance for managers and employees.
- Equip managers and recruiters to have confident, informed conversations about pay.
- Advise the People team and business leaders on compensation questions related to hiring, retention, and promotion.

## Requirements

- 8+ years of compensation experience with significant hands-on program design experience, ideally including time at a scaling company.
- Deep technical foundations across base pay, variable pay, and equity, including understanding of program mechanics and administration.
- Experience with variable-compensation programs, including sales and go-to-market incentive plans.
- Experience building or substantially rebuilding compensation structures, leveling frameworks, and review processes from scratch.
- Fluency with equity compensation.
- Ability to balance strategic vision with operational detail.
- Strong judgment and a commitment to fair, thoughtful pay decisions.
- Exceptional communication skills, including the ability to make complex compensation situations clear and build trust.
- Comfort working in ambiguity and building programs that do not yet exist.
- Bias toward action balanced with sound judgment around compensation risk.

## Nice to Have

- Experience with multi-country compensation, including the UK and Europe.

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