Compensation Manager

About the Role

We're seeking an exceptional Compensation Manager who is equal parts strategist and practitioner. You won't just administer comp cycles — you'll operate as a trusted partner to the business, using rigorous market research and data to shape compensation philosophy, drive incentive design, and build the tools and frameworks that support talent decisions across the company.

This role demands both scientific precision and practical judgment. The real value you bring is your ability to move fluidly between market analysis and execution — turning complex data into clear recommendations, building compensation infrastructure that cross-functional teams can actually use, and supporting critical moments like performance cycles and offer decisions with speed and confidence. Fluidstack is building the backbone of AI — your work ensures the people doing that building are recognized and retained accordingly.

What You'll Do

• Partner strategically with the business: Work directly with leadership and department heads as a trusted compensation advisor — understanding their goals, challenging assumptions, and bringing market data and competitive intelligence that sharpen their thinking on pay strategy.
• Drive compensation planning: Own annual and off-cycle comp planning processes end-to-end, ensuring alignment between business strategy, talent priorities, and budget — and stay hands-on through execution.
• Build tools that serve the business: Design and maintain compensation tools, models, and resources that support cross-functional needs — from offer decisioning and leveling guidance to performance cycle support — making it easier for People, Finance, and leadership to act with confidence.
• Own market research and intelligence: Conduct rigorous, ongoing competitive benchmarking and market analyses using tools like Radford, Mercer, or Levels.fyi. Translate research into practical, actionable guidance — not just data for the sake of data.
• Build and refine compensation programs: Leverage department-level expertise to design, benchmark, and continuously improve compensation and incentive structures that are competitive against top AI, infrastructure, and tech companies.
• Support performance cycles: Partner with People and leadership to ensure compensation inputs into performance and review cycles are accurate, consistent, and aligned to strategy.
• Operate as a data-driven function: Build and maintain compensation models, reporting cadences, and dashboards that surface the right insights — pay equity, offer competitiveness, retention risk — and drive smarter decisions.

What We Value

• You are both strategic and tactical — you can set the vision for a compensation program and still build the model yourself. You don't hand off the details.
• You bring scientific rigor to your craft: your market research is methodical, your models are defensible, and your recommendations are grounded in evidence — not convention.
• You build tools people actually use. You've designed compensation resources, calculators, or frameworks that cross-functional teams rely on to make faster, better decisions.
• You've supported performance cycles end-to-end and understand how compensation intersects with review processes, calibration, and promotion decisions.
• You translate complexity into clarity. You can take a dense comp model and explain it simply and confidently to a senior leader or a hiring manager making their first offer.
• You measure what matters — pay equity, offer competitiveness, retention risk — and use data to make better decisions, not just report activity.
• Bonus: Background in AI, cloud/infrastructure, or data centers. Experience designing incentive and equity programs, including a strong understanding of private vs. public equity frameworks. Exposure to comp work in a pre-IPO or rapid-scaling environment.

Must Haves

• 4+ years of experience in compensation or a related HR function, with demonstrated ownership of comp planning cycles and program design.
• Proven ability to drive compensation planning transitions in alignment with business and talent strategy — be ready to talk specifics.
• Experience partnering with cross-functional stakeholders to build and refine compensation programs, with deep knowledge of at least one competitive talent market (tech, AI, infrastructure, or similar).
• Strong analytical skills — you build and maintain complex compensation models and can translate outputs into clear recommendations for senior leaders.
• Track record of leveraging market data (Radford, Mercer, Levels.fyi, or similar) to benchmark and calibrate pay structures.

Nice to Have

• Background at high-growth tech companies or startups, preferably in AI, cloud/infrastructure, or data centers.
• Experience designing incentive and equity programs, including a strong understanding of private vs. public equity frameworks.
• Exposure to comp work in a pre-IPO or rapid-scaling environment.