Manager Reward & Recognition Manager

MAF; Australia; Remote; AUD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Global remote work

High impact role

Collaborative global team

Job summary

MAF International invites a Reward and Recognition Manager to shape a global framework spanning multiple geographies within a transformative not-for-profit aviation charity. You will lead a two-subfunction team (pay structures and benefits/recognition), implementing and governing the framework while collaborating with external partners.

You’ll design international pay approaches, COLA methodologies, and expatriate considerations, ensuring equity and affordability across ~20 jurisdictions.

Qualifications

• At least five years’ experience in an aviation-related role.
• Formal training or experience in QA and Safety Management.
• Understanding of human factors and their aviation applications.
• Strong analytical, reasoning and problem-solving abilities.
• Excellent written and spoken English.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills.
• Ability to work independently and across cultures.
• Proactive, with initiative to identify issues and drive improvement.

Responsibilities

• Advise leadership up to Board on reward philosophy and lead a small expert team.
• Embed the global reward framework across geographies, balancing market competitiveness and equity.
• Own implementation, monitoring and governance of the framework.
• Develop international pay methodologies including COLA and expatriate considerations.
• Set global minimum standards for benefits aligned to local markets.
• Design recognition approaches with L&D and People Care.
• Support payroll governance across countries we operate in.

Skills

Aviation experience

QA & Safety Mgmt

Human factors

Analytical skills

English proficiency

Communication skills

Independent / self-starter

Cross-cultural

Education

Compensation certification

Job description

Help shape the reward, benefits and recognition framework for a newly integrated global organisation, and lead its implementation

Location: Flexible, with a preference for the successful candidate to be based at one of our MAF International entities.

MAF International is a Christian not-for-profit organisation that uses aviation to deliver essential services — medical evacuations, supplies, disaster relief and education — to remote communities across Africa and Asia Pacific.

With an 80-year history, MAF International is undergoing a major transformation — integrating a historically federated structure into a single global organisation, with the goal of reaching more than 5,000 remote communities by 2045. Its new People Operations and Strategic Projects function is being built now, and this role helps shape it from the start.

Why this role matters

Designing reward across many countries and currencies — competitive enough to attract talent, equitable enough that colleagues trust the system, and financially sustainable — is a genuinely complex problem. You would shape the answer alongside colleagues around the world.

As Reward and Recognition Manager you lead a department of two sub-functions — pay structures and framework, and benefits, allowances and recognition — serving around 850 staff across roughly 20 pay and legal jurisdictions, including some 120 internationally mobile staff. This is a build role, not a caretaker role: you’ll bring reward expertise to our global reward framework project, alongside an external specialist partner and colleagues across the organisation, and then own its implementation, monitoring and governance.

Please note: Candidates must hold existing legal working rights for their proposed location of employment.

Salary: Competitive and flexible, with remuneration aligned to the successful candidate’s location, experience, and local employment context.

Responsibilities

What You’ll Be Doing

• Advise leadership up to Board level on reward philosophy and lead a small expert team.
• Embed the approved reward and recognition framework across our geographies — balancing market competitiveness, internal equity and affordability.
• Act as reward specialist in the global reward framework project, then own the approved framework’s implementation, monitoring and governance across MAF International.
• Develop and maintain the methodology behind international pay: north/south pay frameworks, cost-of-living methodology and hardship scales.
• Set global minimum standards for benefits while keeping their design and delivery close to each local employment market.
• Design recognition approaches with L&OD and People Care that reinforce agreed behaviours and contribution.
• Contribute to a People and Culture and Finance project on how payroll will be organised across the countries we operate in.

Qualifications, Skills & Experience

About you

You will bring solid aviation experience combined with a strong understanding of quality assurance and safety management. You will be confident working with people at different levels and from different cultural backgrounds, and be able to turn quality requirements and data into practical improvements.

We are looking for someone who has:

• At least five years’ experience in an aviation-related role.
• Formal training or experience in Quality Assurance and Safety Management.
• An understanding of human factors and their application within aviation.
• Strong analytical, reasoning and problem-solving skills.
• Excellent written and spoken English.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills.
• The confidence to work independently while also being an effective team player.
• The ability to work effectively across cultures and adapt to changing or challenging environments.
• A proactive approach, with the initiative to identify issues and drive improvement.

Closing date: Applications close on the 27th November

Qualifications, Skills & Experience

What You’ll Bring

• A successful track record in a senior global reward role, ideally in an international or not-for-profit organisation.
• Experience designing international pay frameworks — north/south structures, COLA methodology and expatriate compensation.
• Deep technical craft: job evaluation, market benchmarking, pay structures and recognition practice.
• Strong analytical and modelling skills; a compensation certification is welcome.
• The ability to make reward clear and credible — so people at every level understand and trust how they’re paid.
• High integrity, courageous judgement, and the ability to make reward decisions that hold organisational, financial and values considerations together.
• You share our vision, mission and values.

Why MAF?

• A rare chance to build, not just run — you join as the function takes shape, with genuine influence on its design.
• Work from anywhere: this role is globally remote, because talent matters more than time zone.
• A small, expert team with real influence, in an organisation whose work has measurable impact.