Sr Director of Compensation

General Summary:

The Director of Sales Compensation leads the strategy, design, and evolution of sales compensation programs that motivate performance, support scalable growth, and strengthen financial discipline. This role partners closely with Sales, Finance, HR, and executive leadership to align incentive programs with revenue goals, market practices, seller productivity, and sound governance. The role requires deep expertise in incentive design, quantitative modeling, business partnership, and cross-functional influence, along with the ability to lead and develop a team.

Essential Job Functions:

Sales Compensation Strategy & Plan Design

• Lead design, implementation, and ongoing evaluation of sales incentive programs across business lines, channels, and revenue models.
• Align incentive structures to company strategy, financial goals, go-to-market priorities, and desired sales behaviors.
• Design core sales compensation components, including target compensation, pay mix, quotas, crediting rules, payout mechanics, and risk controls.
• Use market data, performance results, and feedback to improve simplicity, affordability, and line of sight to earnings.

Quota Setting, Modeling & Financial Partnership

• Partner with Sales, Finance, and Revenue Operations to establish data-driven quota methodologies.
• Build models to assess compensation cost, payout curves, earning opportunity, performance differentiation, and financial risk.
• Support budgeting, forecasting, accruals, reconciliations, and variance analysis.
• Analyze quota attainment and present recommendations, trade-offs, and risks to senior leaders.

Administration & Communication

• Establish scalable governance for approvals, documentation, eligibility, communications, exceptions, disputes, and change control.
• Lead the annual sales compensation planning cycle, including timelines, decision rights, approvals, and implementation.
• Oversee sales compensation operations, including eligibility, quotas, crediting, calculations, adjustments, statements, reconciliations, and payouts.
• Create clear compensation documents and partner with Legal, HR, Finance, Payroll, and Internal Audit on compliance and controls.

Analytics & Technology

• Develop dashboards to evaluate quota attainment, payout distribution, compensation cost, productivity, and program effectiveness.
• Identify unintended incentives, data-quality issues, administrative gaps, and improvement opportunities.
• Guide sales compensation technology strategy and integrations across CRM, finance, payroll, HR, data, and reporting platforms.
• Leverage automation, analytics, and AI tools to improve modeling accuracy, reporting speed, anomaly detection, documentation, and workflow consistency.

Leadership & Cross-Functional Partnership

• Serve as a trusted advisor to Sales, Finance, and senior leaders on incentive strategy, seller motivation, productivity, and revenue growth.
• Build cross-functional alignment across business priorities, participant experience, and financial discipline.
• Lead change management for new incentive programs, measures, quotas, systems, and policy updates.
• Lead and develop team members, project resources, consultants, and technology partners as needed.

Supportive Job Functions:

1. Stay current on sales compensation practices, technology, AI, regulatory considerations, and market trends.
2. Support revenue growth, commercial effectiveness, and transformation initiatives.
3. Perform other duties as assigned.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Sales Compensation Strategy & Design: Deep knowledge of incentive design, including OTE, pay mix, quotas, crediting, payout mechanics, and governance.
• Business & Financial Acumen: Ability to translate strategy into measurable compensation frameworks and evaluate cost, risk, affordability, and return.
• Analytics & Modeling: Advanced skill in modeling, scenario analysis, dashboarding, and interpreting performance trends.
• Technology & AI Fluency: Strong proficiency with analytics, reporting, sales performance management, and AI-enabled tools.
• Leadership & Execution: Ability to operate as a strategic advisor and hands-on leader while driving disciplined execution.
• Influence & Communication: Excellent executive communication, facilitation, stakeholder management, and change leadership skills.
• Judgment & Control: High accuracy, discretion, integrity, accountability, and attention to detail with sensitive information.

Education, Experience, and Certification*:

• Bachelor's Degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Business, Human Resources, Analytics, or related field required; advanced degree or compensation certification preferred.
• Eight or more years of progressive experience in sales compensation, incentive compensation, revenue operations, sales operations, finance, consulting, or related field.
• At least five years of hands-on sales compensation plan design experience; services, SaaS, media, data, or technology-enabled services experience preferred.
• Demonstrated success aligning compensation frameworks with business goals, financial priorities, and desired sales behaviors.
• Experience with an incentive compensation or sales performance management platform such as Xactly, Varicent, CaptivateIQ, Anaplan, SAP, CallidusCloud, or comparable solution.
• Experience leading employees, project teams, vendors, or cross-functional initiatives.
• Strong software skills and experience using AI-enabled tools for analysis, modeling, reporting, automation, or workflow improvement.
• Ability to travel up to 20%.
• Position may be located anywhere in the United States; Central or Eastern time zones preferred.

*Minimum requirements needed to perform the job.

Scope of Job:

1. May lead a sales compensation team or serve as an enterprise-wide subject matter leader.
2. Operates with high autonomy and influences senior leaders and cross-functional partners.
3. Regularly interacts with Sales, Finance, HR, Revenue Operations, Legal, Payroll, and Technology leaders.
4. Impacts seller behavior, revenue performance, compensation investment, participant experience, and organizational risk.
5. Requires access to highly sensitive employee, compensation, sales, client, and financial information.
6. Requires strong controls due to potential financial, compliance, payment, and employee trust implications.