Manager, Total Rewards & Key Projects

Your Role:

We are looking for a Total Rewards leader who is deeply fluent in compensation and equally energized by the analytical, cross-functional work that comes with building a growing company.

This is a hands-on Manager / Senior Manager role. Compensation is the center of gravity, not the whole job. You will own core Total Rewards work across a global, remote workforce, and you will also take on high-impact People work including headcount planning, people budgeting, and M&A from a People / Total Rewards lens — plus other analytical projects that sit outside a traditional TR box. Those projects will often be analytical: turning messy data into decisions, standing up new processes, and helping the company scale how we hire, pay, and support people.

You will work across regions, entities, and time zones — not as a single-country specialist. You will partner closely with People, Recruiting, Finance, and business leaders. You will be the person others come to for clean data, sound judgment, and a clear recommendation.

The level (Manager vs. Senior Manager) will be determined by the depth of your experience and the scope you are ready to own.

Things You Get To Do

Total Rewards

• Own day-to-day compensation programs across a global, remote workforce, including base pay, variable pay, and equity-related processes.
• Partner with leaders on offers, promotions, leveling, and pay decisions so recommendations are consistent, market-aware, and aligned to our philosophy.
• Build and maintain job architecture, including job IDs, job families, levels, and titles, so hiring, pay, and reporting sit on a clean foundation.
• Price roles and refresh ranges using multiple market data sources, survey submissions, and internal data. Comfort working across imperfect, overlapping datasets is essential.
• Run or support compensation cycles (merit, bonus, equity, and related processes), including modeling, manager enablement, quality checks, and close-out reporting.
• Implement, configure, and support compensation platforms and related tools. You do not need to have used a specific vendor; you do need to have stood up or been a primary operator of a compensation system, and to keep it accurate as the company changes.
• Advise on global benefit structures and how they interact with total rewards. You will not be expected to be a benefits administrator in every country, but you should understand how benefit design, eligibility, and cost differ across markets and be able to partner with specialists, brokers, and vendors.
• Support pay equity, pay transparency, and related compliance work with practical analysis and process, not just policy language.
• Prepare clear materials for People leadership, Finance, and business stakeholders: range recommendations, cycle outcomes, cost models, and “what this means / what we should do.”

Recruiting Partnership

• Support Recruiting with timely, usable data: ranges, leveling guidance, offer competitiveness, and exception context so offers can move in real time.
• Maintain job ID integrity as requisitions are opened, backfilled, and re-leveled. Keep the connection between the job catalog and how we hire clean and current.
• Help Recruiting and hiring managers make consistent decisions when a role does not map neatly to an existing job or market match.

Headcount Planning, Budgeting & M&A

In addition to core Total Rewards, you will:

• Own or partner on headcount planning with Finance and business leaders: annual plans, in-year changes, backfills vs. new roles, and the connection between the job catalog, reqs, and approved seats.
• Own or partner on people budgeting: compensation budgets, merit/bonus/equity pool modeling, offer and promotion cost impact, and actuals vs. plan. Build views leadership can use to make decisions.
• Run scenario work as the company grows or changes shape (hiring pace, mix, location, leveling) so tradeoffs are visible before decisions are locked.
• Support M&A from a People / Total Rewards perspective: diligence inputs, mapping jobs and pay, comparing compensation and benefit structures, flagging cost and risk, and helping plan integration of people, jobs, and rewards — through close if that is what the work requires.

Key Projects

• Lead and contribute to People projects that sit adjacent to Total Rewards as Alpaca builds and grows. These will often be analytical and operational: workforce data, process design, program build-outs, integrations, and decision support.
• Bring a builder’s mindset. You will be asked to go beyond “run the cycle” into questions like how we structure work, how we measure people outcomes, and how we scale programs without adding unnecessary process.
• Stretch into other People areas as needs emerge. We want someone who is confident in compensation and eager to expand, not someone who wants to stay in a narrow TR lane.
• Partner across time zones with teammates, vendors, and leaders in multiple countries. Set expectations, document decisions, and keep work moving asynchronously.

Who You Are (Must-Haves)

• 7+ years of Total Rewards, compensation, or closely related People analytics/operations experience, including ownership of compensation programs in a multi-country or globally distributed environment. Manager vs. Senior Manager will depend on the depth and breadth of that ownership.
• Strong compensation craft: job architecture, market pricing, ranges, offer support, pay decisions, and cycle execution. You can explain the “why” behind a recommendation, not just the number.
• Experience managing multiple compensation data sets and surveys: submissions, matching, aging, blending sources, and reconciling conflicts between vendors, geographies, and internal history.
• Hands-on experience implementing and/or serving as a primary operator of a compensation platform (planning, job/range data, workflow, or similar). Specific vendors are less important than having done the work.
• Working knowledge of benefit structures across multiple countries — eligibility, typical plan design differences, and how benefits sit inside a total rewards package.
• Proven partnership with Recruiting: providing real-time range, leveling, and offer data; keeping job IDs accurate; and helping hiring move without sacrificing consistency.
• Ability to own headcount planning and people budgeting, plus comfort operating in M&A-style analysis even without a deal-team background.
• High analytical fluency. You are comfortable in spreadsheets and people data, can build models others can follow, and can turn analysis into a short, clear recommendation.
• Experience working across global locations and time zones. You communicate clearly in writing, document decisions, and do not need everyone in the same room to make progress.
• Sound judgment and discretion with sensitive pay, offer, and employee data.
• Builder energy: you like standing up something that did not exist, improving a messy process, and then operating it well. You are grounded in compensation and genuinely interested in stretching into other People work.
• Ability to overlap with West Coast working hours on a regular basis. Pacific, Mountain or Central time zone bases preferred.

Who You Might Be (Nice-to-Haves)

• Direct prior M&A experience from a People / Total Rewards lens (due diligence, mapping jobs and pay, integration planning, or post-close alignment). The work is in the job either way; prior deal experience is preferred, not required.
• Hands-on requisition (req ID) management in partnership with Recruiting: intake, job-to-req mapping, approvals, and data quality.
• Experience in a high-growth, remote, or multi-entity environment where the org chart, job catalog, and headcount data were changing quickly.
• Exposure to equity compensation administration or equity cycle support (you do not need to be an equity specialist).
• Experience partnering on broader People analytics, workforce planning, or HR systems work beyond compensation.
• Relevant certification (e.g., CCP or equivalent) is a plus, not a requirement.