Director, Sales Compensation
About The Position
Cirrascale is hiring a Director, Sales Compensation to own the strategy, governance, administration, and continuous improvement of sales incentive compensation across the go-to-market organization. This role owns the full life cycle of sales compensation, including plan design, quota and payout mechanics, commission operations, analytics, systems, controls, executive reporting, and field communication. This is a foundational senior role reporting to the Head of Revenue Operations. You will translate business strategy into effective incentive plans, manage scalable payout operations, partner closely with senior leadership, and ensure plans are financially sound, operationally reliable, and clearly understood by the field. The role is both strategic and hands-on, emphasizing cross-functional influence, deep expertise in incentive mechanics, strong financial modeling, and the ability to run compensation operations with rigor.
Requirements
- 10+ years of experience in sales compensation, incentive design, sales operations, revenue operations, finance, or a closely related analytical function
- 5+ years of experience directly leading or materially influencing sales compensation design and administration in a B2B environment
- Deep expertise in sales compensation mechanics, including quota setting support, pay mix design, accelerators, overlays, bookings treatment, renewals, expansions, and multi-year deal structures
- Demonstrated experience owning compensation operations, including payout processes, controls, disputes, exception handling, and executive reporting
- Strong financial and analytical skills, including advanced spreadsheet modeling, scenario analysis, and compensation cost-of-sales evaluation
- Experience partnering with senior Sales, Finance, HR, and Legal stakeholders in a cross-functional environment
- Strong systems fluency across CRM, spreadsheet models, BI tools, and commission automation platforms
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex compensation concepts clearly to executives, managers, and sellers
- Bachelor's degree in Business, Finance, Economics, Operations, or a related field
Nice To Haves
- Experience in a hardware-plus-services, infrastructure, cloud, SaaS, or hybrid recurring-revenue business model
- Experience with margin-based compensation plans and multi-year contract treatment
- Experience building or scaling a sales compensation function in a high-growth or changing environment
- Experience with platforms such as HubSpot, Spiff, QuotaPath, Xactly, CaptivateIQ, Anaplan, or similar tools
- Experience supporting commission accounting, policy controls, and audit-related processes
Responsibilities
- Own the company's sales compensation philosophy, framework, and operating model across all variable-pay-eligible go-to-market roles
- Design and recommend sales incentive plans, including pay mix, commission rates, accelerators, quota mechanics, overlays, renewal and expansion treatment, multi-year deal treatment, exception rules, and plan governance
- Lead annual and semi-annual compensation planning cycles, including design proposals, scenario modeling, cost analysis, stakeholder review, approvals, documentation, and rollout
- Partner with Sales Leadership and Finance on quota design, territory implications, attainment distributions, and compensation cost-of-sales tradeoffs
- Run end-to-end commission operations, including data validation, payout calculations, exception handling, dispute resolution, accrual support, reporting, and monthly or quarterly close coordination
- Build and maintain strong controls for compensation administration, including plan approval workflows, policy interpretation, audit readiness, payout accuracy, and overpayment prevention
- Own sales compensation systems, tooling, and process architecture, including CRM dependencies, hierarchy management, commission automation, workflow integrity, and reporting logic
- Produce and analyze compensation analytics, including attainment distributions, payout curves, plan ROI, behavioral signal analysis, compensation cost-of-sales, overpayment risk, and plan effectiveness trends
- Advise senior executives on sales compensation strategy, emerging risks, field feedback, and recommended changes based on data and business performance
- Partner with the Revenue FP&A Lead on the unified revenue reporting layer; Sales Compensation contributes incentive economics and plan performance analytics
- Create clear compensation communications for leaders and the field, including plan letters, FAQs, payout statements, manager guides, and enablement materials
- Partner with HR and Legal to ensure compensation plans are compliant, well-documented, and consistently administered
Benefits
- Competitive compensation package that includes base salary, performance bonuses and stock option opportunities.
- Comprehensive medical, dental, vision coverage
- 401(k) with company match
- Generous paid time-off
- Professional development support
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Director
