Director, Global Compensation

Grant Thornton•Chicago, IL

4d•$187,500 - $312,500•Hybrid

About The Position

Grant Thornton is seeking a Director, Global Compensation to join the team. As Director, Global Compensation, you will lead the strategy, design, and governance of compensation across our global footprint — harmonizing pay practices across countries while respecting local markets and regulatory requirements. You’ll own our global compensation philosophy, build scalable pay structures, and serve as a key architect of our global job framework. A defining feature of this role is leading compensation integration for M&A activity — bringing newly acquired firms onto a consistent job and pay architecture in a way that protects talent, realizes synergies, and drives cultural alignment. You’ll partner across People & Culture, Finance, Legal, and business leadership, because together is how we succeed.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in HR, Business, Finance, or related field; MBA or advanced degree preferred.
10+ years of progressive compensation experience, including 3+ years leading global compensation strategy, design, and governance.
Demonstrated expertise in global job architecture, leveling, and pay structure design.
Direct experience supporting M&A compensation integration and harmonization.
Familiarity with global regulatory environments, including EU Pay Transparency and pay equity.
Strong command of compensation systems and tools (e.g., Oracle HCM, Payfactors, Syndio) and advanced Excel/analytics.
Excellent verbal and written communication; ability to influence and build consensus across geographies.

Nice To Haves

Professional certification (e.g., CCP, GRP) preferred.

Responsibilities

Own and evolve the global compensation strategy and pay philosophy, ensuring alignment to business goals and competitive market positioning.
Design and maintain scalable, market-based pay structures that flex across geographies while preserving global consistency.
Serve as the subject-matter expert, advising senior leaders on pay decisions, market positioning, and total cash competitiveness.
Lead the development and governance of the global job architecture — job levels, ranks/progression, career paths, and technical specialty alignment that is anchored in a consistent, competency-based taxonomy.
Oversee job mapping, leveling, and validation as roles are aligned to the global framework and migrated into HRIS systems and define a phased path to the firm’s compensation strategy (base, bonus, equity).
Assess integration-driven role changes (scope, retention risk, market demand) and recommend base pay and bonus actions with strong change-management discipline.
Lead the benchmarking approach and market positioning; manage survey providers (e.g., Mercer, WTW etc.) and market-pricing tools (e.g., Payfactors).
Interpret market data to inform structure design, salary ranges, and bonus tables.
Administer salary structures across geographies.
Ensure compliance with all local and global regulatory requirements, including EU Pay Transparency Directive readiness and pay equity reporting across jurisdictions.
Lead pay equity analysis and remediation planning (e.g., via Syndio) and manage compensation-related risk.
Ensure compliance with US federal, state, and local pay regulations, minimum-wage/threshold updates, and state pay-transparency and pay-data-reporting requirements.
Own the end-to-end administration of annual compensation cycles (base pay, bonus, equity) across geographies ensuring accurate, timely and consistent execution.
Drive continuous process improvement across comp tools and HRIS.
Maintain data integrity and controls — validate compensation data before system pushes, minimize ad hoc exceptions, and enforce consistent, well-documented processes.
Contribute executive level materials with clear, data-driven insights.
Lead, coach, and develop a team of compensation professionals.
Serve as escalation point for compensation questions from HR Business Partners, People Operations, Talent Acquisition and business leadership.