Compensation Analyst

Crane 1•West Chester, OH

11d•Onsite

About The Position

Crane 1 is seeking a Compensation Analyst to own the design, administration, and analysis of variable compensation plans. The role serves as the subject-matter expert on sales compensation and partners with Sales leadership, Finance, HR, and Sales Operations to ensure plans support business goals and are administered accurately. This is an in-office position five days a week in West Chester, Ohio, reporting to the Chief Financial Officer or designate. The stated salary is $90,000–$100,000 per year, with bonus eligibility; the bonus amount is to be determined. The analyst designs and models sales incentive plans, manages commission and incentive calculations through Payroll handoff, and maintains related plan documents and governance. The position also develops compensation analytics and reports, supports expense accruals and forecasting, helps ensure legal and internal-control compliance, communicates plans to employees, and identifies opportunities to improve or automate processes. As needed, the role supports broader compensation work such as benchmarking, job evaluations, salary structure maintenance, and the annual merit cycle. Success in the first 12 months includes accurate and timely incentive payouts with fewer disputes and manual adjustments; regular, clear reporting to Sales leaders on attainment and plan cost; completion and communication of the next fiscal year's plans before the plan year begins; and documentation and automation of at least one key calculation or reporting process. Crane 1 Services states that it is an equal opportunity employer and considers qualified applicants without regard to protected status under applicable federal, state, and local laws.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Business, Economics, HR, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
3–5 years of experience in compensation, sales operations, or financial analysis, including at least 2 years focused on sales incentive or commission plans.
Working knowledge of accounting and ERP systems such as Sage, and of incentive compensation systems and tools.
Working knowledge of benefits compensation, including health and welfare plans, retirement benefits, and total rewards.
Advanced Excel skills, including complex formulas, lookups, pivot tables, and scenario modeling.
High proficiency using AI analytical tools to analyze data, build models, and automate reporting.
Ability to explain complex plan mechanics in plain language to sellers and managers.

Nice To Haves

Experience with incentive compensation management tools such as Xactly, CaptivateIQ, Spiff, Varicent, or Performio.
Experience with CRM systems such as SAGE CRM, Salesforce, or Microsoft Dynamics.
Experience with SQL, Power BI, or similar reporting tools.
Background in industrial services, field services, equipment, or other B2B, multi-branch environments.

Responsibilities

Partner with Sales leadership and Finance on annual and quarterly sales incentive plan design, including commissions, bonuses, SPIFFs, and accelerators.
Model proposed plan changes, including projected payouts, cost of sales, pay mix, leverage, and distribution of earnings across the sales team.
Recommend quota-setting approaches and territory or account crediting rules in partnership with Sales Operations.
Benchmark sales compensation against market data for sales roles in industrial services and related industries.
Own end-to-end commission and incentive calculations each pay cycle, from data collection and validation through calculation, review, approval, and handoff to Payroll.
Reconcile sales and bookings data from ERP and CRM systems against Finance records to ensure payout accuracy.
Process plan exceptions, splits, clawbacks, draws, and proration for new hires, transfers, and terminations according to plan documents and policy.
Maintain plan documents, participant acknowledgments, and the plan governance calendar.
Respond to sales employee and manager questions and disputes and resolve them clearly and promptly.
Build and maintain dashboards and reports on attainment, payout trends, plan effectiveness, cost of sales, and pay-for-performance alignment.
Conduct post-period plan effectiveness reviews and share findings and recommendations with HR and Sales leadership.
Support incentive expense accruals and forecasting with Finance.
Use AI-enabled analytical tools for modeling, data validation, reconciliation, and reporting, while appropriately reviewing results and protecting confidential pay data.
Keep incentive processes compliant with federal and state wage laws and internal audit controls.
Prepare plan summaries, FAQs, and training materials, and help roll out new plans to the field.
Identify and implement process improvements and automation, including evaluating or optimizing an incentive compensation management platform.
As needed, support base pay and benefits compensation benchmarking, job evaluations, salary structure maintenance, and the annual merit cycle for sales and non-sales roles.