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Compensation Manager

184k – 276kNew York, NYAustin, TXSan Francisco, CAHybrid4+ YOE
Summary

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.

About the role

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.
Skills
Compensation planningMarket benchmarkingRadfordMercerLevels.fyiCompensation modelingPay equity analysisIncentive designEquity programsPerformance cycle support
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