Senior Director, Sales Compensation

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States.

📋 Description

• Take ownership of the comprehensive strategy, design, governance, and operations of sales incentive compensation throughout the organization.

• Direct the yearly sales compensation planning cycle, encompassing plan design, alignment of quota-setting, documentation, approvals, and implementation in the field.

• Create incentive frameworks that include accelerators, SPIFs, recurring-revenue credits, overlay plans, and specialist plans.

• Collaborate with Sales Leadership and FP&A to ensure that incentive expenditures align with revenue and margin objectives.

• Perform market benchmarking and competitive analysis.

• Establish policies for compensation, approval processes, and protocols for dispute resolution.

• Guarantee adherence to wage/hour, pay-transparency, and pay-equity regulations.

• Manage controls over commission calculations, accruals, and payment processes while supporting audits.

• Lead, mentor, and develop the sales compensation team.

• Supervise commission and bonus calculations, accrual journal entries, and reconciliations.

• Own the technology roadmap for compensation, including configuration, automation, and integration with CRM, ERP, and HRIS.

• Provide executive dashboards and insights regarding plan performance, pay mix, incentive ROI, and quota achievements.

• Model the financial and behavioral effects of proposed changes to plans.

• Offer advice to Sales, Finance, and HR concerning new hires, promotions, terminations, exceptions, and M&A/territory integration.

• Partner with Sales Operations for territory and quota design.

• Review commission runs and reconciliations prior to payroll submissions.

• Resolve escalated compensation disputes.

• Present monthly or quarterly sales compensation scorecards to Finance and Sales leadership.

• Engage in annual quota-setting, territory design, and budget planning processes as the subject-matter expert in compensation.

⛳️ Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Business, or a related discipline.

• 15+ years of progressive experience in sales compensation, sales finance, or total rewards.

• Experience in people management.

• Proven experience in designing and administering sales incentive plans within a technology or professional/managed services setting is highly preferred.

• In-depth knowledge of Incentive Compensation Management platforms, with a strong preference for Xactly Incent.

• Advanced skills in Microsoft Excel, including complex modeling, pivot tables, and array/lookup formulas.

• Proficiency with BI/visualization tools like Power BI or Tableau.

• Understanding of the fundamentals of commission accounting, including accruals, journal entries, revenue recognition implications, and reconciliations.

• Familiarity with CRM data structures for bookings, quotas, and territory data.

• Experience in evaluating and implementing AI/automation tools for forecasting, anomaly detection, and natural-language reporting.

• Knowledge of sales compensation plan design principles, such as pay mix, leverage, accelerators/decelerators, caps, thresholds, and recurring-revenue crediting.

• Strategic mindset with the ability to connect compensation design to corporate growth, margin, and go-to-market strategies.

• Executive presence with the capability to present financial models to CFOs, CROs, and Sales leadership.

• Skills in change management and cross-functional influence.

• Proven ability to manage, develop, and motivate professionals in compensation or finance.

• Strong negotiation and conflict-resolution abilities.

• Project management skills to oversee the annual compensation planning cycle within strict deadlines.

🏝️ Benefits

• Remote work arrangement.

• Reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities.

• Equal opportunity employment.

• Priority referrals for protected veterans.

• Applications accepted on a rolling basis.