Director, Compensation

AAA Mountain West Group • Walnut Creek, CA

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Director, Compensation serves as a mission-critical leader and strategic partner, tasked with the orchestration of our enterprise-wide compensation ecosystem. In this high-impact role, you will bridge the gap between strategy and operational excellence, ensuring our rewards frameworks empower employees across all lines of business. You will be the pilot of our compensation infrastructure, establishing objectives and procedures that resonate from immediate operations to long-term company-wide prosperity. With a dual mandate of Corporate and Incentive Compensation, you will lead the evolution of our job architectures and total compensation processes while providing oversight to our variable pay execution. You will directly influence our ability to attract, motivate, and retain top-tier talent. NOTE: This role is hybrid and requires 3 days a week in our Walnut Creek, CA office.

Requirements

• 8–10+ years of related professional compensation experience, including leadership in corporate and variable compensation.
• Educational background should be in Finance, Business, Operations or similar discipline.
• Proven expertise in designing and governing cyclical merit processes, salary structures, and automated enterprise Incentive Compensation Management (ICM) systems.
• Demonstrated track record of directly advising senior leaders on sensitive pay equity, incentive compensation, and complex job architecture initiatives.
• Advanced, wide-ranging professional knowledge of both broad-based corporate rewards (job evaluation, merit metrics, compliance) and variable sales incentive design and mechanics.
• Demonstrated ability to manage high-volume transactional cycles and quick-turnaround payroll windows with complete operational accuracy.
• Advanced financial modeling and data concepts tracking capability; ability to evaluate situations using conceptual thinking to align compensation strategy with overall company objectives.
• Outstanding communication and presentation skills; able to reconcile multiple stakeholder views, manage pushback from senior business lines, and drive cross-functional alignment.

Nice To Haves

• Workday HCM experience preferred.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, implementation, and governance of the organizational job structure and catalog, title leveling frameworks, salary structures, and internal equity.
• Lead the design and administration of all corporate compensation programs, ensuring that they work harmoniously to deliver on a competitive, compliant, and fiscally responsible compensation program.
• Own the end-to-end execution of cyclical compensation events, including the focal review cycle, broad-based promotion frameworks, equitable use of all compensation elements, and equity allocations.
• Work directly with executive leadership and HR to solve complex talent attraction and retention challenges.
• Work directly with the Head of Total Rewards to implement the executive compensation roadmap.
• Lead the preparation of high-impact materials for the Human Capital Committee, ensuring rigorous market analysis, benchmarking, and operational excellence in the administration of executive programs.
• Direct routine geographic differential evaluations and market benchmarking using major surveys (e.g., Mercer, Radford, WTW) to update localized salary structures ahead of talent trends; manage the pay grade structure to ensure it remains competitive.
• Design, model, and implement compensation and performance matrices that tie employee performance directly to compensation adjustments, ensuring financial modeling aligns with allocated budgets.
• Lead the variable compensation strategy by guiding the Senior Sales Compensation Strategy Partner and Manager, Incentive Compensation in modeling and analyzing plans to ensure fiscal responsibility, accurate forecasting, and measurable ROI.
• Define the vision for incentive design principles, commission structures, and targeted sales campaigns, ensuring all programs are rigorously aligned with MWG’s broader strategic objectives.
• Serve as the lead in transforming the variable pay team into a high-value advisory unit.
• Partner across Sales, Strategy, and Finance to evaluate design trade-offs and prevent plan cannibalization across product lines.
• Lead integrations into MWG’s processing tool, Varicent, to eliminate manual work and streamline the incentive processing systems.
• Enforce operational rigor around the bi-weekly, non-arrears short-term incentive calculation engine for all short-term incentives.
• Ensure data anomalies are resolved swiftly so that erroneous processing decisions do not result in critical delays or jeopardize overall business activities.
• Drive the strategy for internal systems automation and configuration to consistently reduce manual file dependencies.
• Interact regularly with management across diverse disciplines to educate and persuade others in sensitive, complex situations while actively preserving organizational relationships.
• Maintain strict oversight of the departmental compensation budget, ensuring adjustments, promotions, and variable structures directly contribute to the medium-term results of the enterprise.

Benefits

• Great Pay - opportunity to participate in AAA discretionary annual incentive plan or other incentive plans depending upon position
• 401k Matching – $1 for $1 company match up to 6% of eligible earnings per pay period
• Medical, Dental, Vision, wellness program and more!
• Paid Holidays
• Paid Time Off – Team Members accrue paid time off monthly.
• Depending on position, an additional 24 hours per year are earmarked for volunteer activities.
• Collaborative Environment – AAA will value your contribution to providing exceptional service to our members
• Free AAA Classic Membership
• AAA Product Discounts
• Tuition Reimbursement Program

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director