Reward & Recognition Manager

Mission Seek; Australia; Remote; AUD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

MAF International is seeking a Reward and Recognition Manager to shape and implement a new global reward framework across multiple jurisdictions. You will lead a small expert team, work with an external partner, and ensure alignment with local markets, equity and affordability.

The role is remote, with preference for a base within MAF entities. You will design pay structures, benefits and recognition programs, and govern their ongoing deployment, monitoring and compliance across regions.

Qualifications

• Five+ years in an aviation-related role.
• Formal training or experience in Quality Assurance and Safety Management.
• Understanding of human factors in aviation.
• Strong analytical, reasoning and problem-solving skills.
• Excellent written and spoken English.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills.
• Ability to work independently while also being a team player.
• Ability to work across cultures and adapt to changing environments.
• Proactive approach to identify issues and drive improvement.

Responsibilities

• Advise leadership up to Board level on reward philosophy and lead a small expert team.
• Embed the approved reward and recognition framework across geographies with market equity and affordability.
• Own the framework’s implementation, monitoring and governance across MAF International.
• Develop international pay methodology including north/south pay frameworks, COLA and hardship scales.
• Set global minimum standards for benefits aligned with local markets.
• Design recognition approaches with L&D and People Care.
• Contribute to payroll organisation across countries.

Skills

Aviation experience

Quality Assurance

Safety Management

Analytical skills

English proficiency

Cross-cultural communication

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

We reserve the right to close this vacancy before the advertised closing date if we receive a sufficient number of applications. We encourage you to apply as soon as possible.

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.

We reserve the right to close this vacancy before the advertised closing date if we receive a sufficient number of applications. We encourage you to apply as soon as possible.

Application Instructions

For more information, contact the MAF Australia Recruitment Team on 1800 987 221 or email [e-mail]

*Australian citizens and/or residents only