From the listing
About the role
Alpaca is looking for a Total Rewards leader who is deeply fluent in compensation and equally energized by the analytical, cross-functional work that comes with building a growing company.
This is a hands-on Manager / Senior Manager role. You will own core Total Rewards work across a global, remote workforce and take on high-impact People work including headcount planning, people budgeting, and M&A from a People / Total Rewards lens, plus other analytical projects.
You will partner closely with People, Recruiting, Finance, and business leaders across regions, entities, and time zones. The level (Manager vs. Senior Manager) will be determined by the depth of your experience and the scope you are ready to own.
What you'll do
- Own day-to-day compensation programs across a global, remote workforce, including base pay, variable pay, and equity-related processes.
- Partner with leaders on offers, promotions, leveling, and pay decisions so recommendations are consistent, market-aware, and aligned to our philosophy.
- Build and maintain job architecture, including job IDs, job families, levels, and titles.
- Price roles and refresh ranges using multiple market data sources, survey submissions, and internal data.
- Run or support compensation cycles (merit, bonus, equity, and related processes), including modeling, manager enablement, quality checks, and close-out reporting.
- Implement, configure, and support compensation platforms and related tools, keeping them accurate as the company changes.
- Advise on global benefit structures and how they interact with total rewards, partnering with specialists, brokers, and vendors.
- Support pay equity, pay transparency, and related compliance work with practical analysis and process.
- Prepare clear materials for People leadership, Finance, and business stakeholders: range recommendations, cycle outcomes, cost models, and recommendations.
- Support Recruiting with timely, usable data: ranges, leveling guidance, offer competitiveness, and exception context so offers can move in real time.
- Maintain job ID integrity as requisitions are opened, backfilled, and re-leveled. Keep the connection between the job catalog and how we hire clean and current.
- Help Recruiting and hiring managers make consistent decisions when a role does not map neatly to an existing job or market match.
What they're looking for
- 7+ years of Total Rewards, compensation, or closely related People analytics/operations experience, including ownership of compensation programs in a multi-country or globally distributed environment.
- Strong compensation craft: job architecture, market pricing, ranges, offer support, pay decisions, and cycle execution. Ability to explain the “why” behind a recommendation, not just the number.
- Experience managing multiple compensation data sets and surveys: submissions, matching, aging, blending sources, and reconciling conflicts between vendors, geographies, and internal history.
- Hands-on experience implementing and/or serving as a primary operator of a compensation platform (planning, job/range data, workflow, or similar). Specific vendors are less important than having done the work.
- Working knowledge of benefit structures across multiple countries — eligibility, typical plan design differences, and how benefits sit inside a total rewards package.
- Proven partnership with Recruiting: providing real-time range, leveling, and offer data; keeping job IDs accurate; and helping hiring move without sacrificing consistency.
- Ability to own headcount planning and people budgeting, plus comfort operating in M&A-style analysis even without a deal-team background.
- High analytical fluency: comfortable in spreadsheets and people data, able to build models others can follow, and turn analysis into a short, clear recommendation.
- Experience working across global locations and time zones, communicating clearly in writing, documenting decisions, and making progress without everyone in the same room.
- Sound judgment and discretion with sensitive pay, offer, and employee data.
- Builder energy: standing up something that did not exist, improving a messy process, and operating it well. Grounded in compensation and genuinely interested in stretching into other People work.
- Ability to overlap with West Coast working hours on a regular basis.
Nice to have
- Pacific, Mountain or Central time zone bases preferred.
- Direct prior M&A experience from a People / Total Rewards lens (due diligence, mapping jobs and pay, integration planning, or post-close alignment).
- Hands-on requisition (req ID) management in partnership with Recruiting: intake, job-to-req mapping, approvals, and data quality.
- Experience in a high-growth, remote, or multi-entity environment where the org chart, job catalog, and headcount data were changing quickly.
- Exposure to equity compensation administration or equity cycle support; you do not need to be an equity specialist.
- Experience partnering on broader People analytics, workforce planning, or HR systems work beyond compensation.
- Relevant certification (e.g., CCP or equivalent).
From the company page
Benefits
The hot takeJeff's read on Alpaca
I like their clear views on the value of remote work, check out this quote from their careers page:
> "Our teams are not just global, we're also 100% remote and have team members in almost every time zone and continent (except Antarctica). By joining Alpaca you'll be part of a multicultural, international organization."
I also like that their Glassdoor scores are going up (now 3.7/5), and they have some solid testimonials. I'm a LITTLE wary of this statement that gives me a bit of a "hustle culture" vibe:
> "We're keen on that last 10% of effort and believe that the details do matter. If this sounds like you, then you're in the right place."