Leader - Total Rewards

Zinnov; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 2,500,000 - 5,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Zinnov is seeking a Total Rewards leader in Bengaluru to build and run end-to-end global compensation, benefits, and equity programs that attract and retain top GCC talent. You will design pay, benefits, and parity frameworks, map India-to-global structures, and partner with Finance and HRIS teams to implement scalable solutions.

You will diagnose strategy, benchmark markets, and implement policy with a strong emphasis on governance, communication, and stakeholder alignment across global and

Qualifications

• Hands-on Total Rewards expertise with material program design.
• Ability to implement policy, systems, payroll mapping and governance.
• Influences senior executives without formal authority.

Responsibilities

• Diagnose business strategy and rewards landscape for GCCs.
• Benchmark talent markets by skill, function, level and geography.
• Design or localize job families, levels, grades, and salary bands.
• Design base structures, variable plans, equity, and joining/retention awards.
• Design benefits, leave policies, transport and wellbeing programs.
• Address parity, compression and legacy inconsistencies while staying India-competitive.
• Model multi-year economics for cost-versus-talent decisions.
• Implement mapping, policy and payroll requirements; guide managers and communicate changes.
• Operate governance metrics: offer acceptance, attrition, retention of critical skills, range penetration.
• Cover lifecycle: greenfield builds, cross-border mapping, and M&A harmonization.

Skills

Total Rewards

Compensation design

Data-driven

Stakeholder influence

Tools

HRIS

Payroll systems

Job description

About Zinnov

Zinnov is a global management consulting firm that helps organizations make decisions that actually get used — and deliver results that matter. For over two decades, we’ve partnered with leading enterprises, high-growth technology companies, and investors to answer some of the toughest questions they face:

Where should we invest?

How do we scale globally?

What capabilities will win in the next decade?

Our work shapes market entry strategies, global operating models, M&A decisions, and long-term growth bets. We’re known for beingdata-led, execution-focused, and outcome-driven— not opinion-heavy slideware.

At Zinnov, how you work matters as much as what you deliver. We value independent thinking, crisp communication, and early ownership. With 450+ professionals across 10 global offices, we work across industries including Digital Services, ER&D, Enterprise Software, Semiconductors, Healthcare, BFSI, Automotive, Media & Telecom, and Private Equity.

Zinnov isn’t for everyone. It’s for people who want steep learning curves, honest feedback, and the chance to see their work influence real business decisions — not just presentations.

Why Globalization Excellence (GE)

Zinnov’s Globalization Excellence (GE) practice helps enterprises build and scale Global Capability Centers (GCCs) end-to-end — from Design & Discovery to Build, Scale, and Run.

In GE, youdon’twork in silos. You:

• Own complex, end-to-end client journeys
• Work across GCC advisory, managed services, and BOT / outsourcing models
• Influence leadership decisions that shape long-term talent and operating strategies

This is where strategy meets execution — and where talent plays a defining role.

About the role

Help global companies build and run a Total Rewards system that attracts the talent their GCC needs, holds together economically, keeps the right internal and global equity, and survives contact with scale.

You will own engagements end to end. You should be as comfortable arguing workforce economics with a CFO as designing a salary structure, settling a fitment exception, or making the model work after launch.

What You Will Do

• Diagnose: Understand the business strategy, GCC charter, workforce plan and talent segments. Set the rewards philosophy, the market position, and where the company should spend differently.
• Benchmark. Define the right talent market by skill, function, level and geography. Select and read Mercer, Aon, WTW and Radford data, and say what it does not tell you.
• Design or localize job families, levels, grades, career tracks, salary bands, promotion rules and India-to-global mapping.
• Design pay: Base structures, variable plans, equity, executive compensation, skill premiums, joining and retention awards for customer programs, fitment rules, overlap allowances, merit and bonus budgets.
• Design benefits. Medical and insurance, retirement and statutory, leave, parental, well-being, flexible benefits, transport, recognition.
• Fix parity: Address inequity, compression, outliers and legacy inconsistency while holding India competitiveness against global architecture.
• Model the economics: Multi-year scenarios that make the cost-versus-talent tradeoff explicit to Finance and the business.
• Implement: Employee mapping, policy, exception rules, HRIS and payroll requirements, manager guidance, employee communication, transition, testing, go-live, first comp cycle.
• Operate and improve: Governance plus the measures that matter: offer acceptance, comp-related declines, regrettable attrition, critical-skill retention, range penetration, compression, promotion velocity, benefit take-up, sentiment, labor-cost variance.
• Cover the lifecycle: Greenfield builds, rapid scale-up, EOR-to-entity transitions, global-to-India mapping, new capabilities and cities, M&A harmonization, restructuring, and the shift to product ownership.
• Build the capability: Reusable diagnostics, benchmark and cost models, templates, playbooks and dashboards that make the next engagement faster.

Experience

• Hands‑on Total Rewards expertise, with a record of personally designing material programs rather than administering them.
• Has carried designs into implementation and can say what changed in policy, systems, payroll, mapping, communication and governance.
• Influences senior executives without formal authority.
• Connects rewards decisions to hiring, retention, talent quality, experience and business economics.
• Uses numbers well and decides with incomplete data and real tradeoffs.
• Knows the India technology and GCC talent markets. Direct GCC experience helps; strong transferable judgment can substitute.
• High agency. Builds methods and tools while serving live customers; can identify future resourcing needs without assuming approved headcount.

What Success Looks Like

• Rewards strategy & pay architecture
• Job architecture, levelling & job evaluation
• Variable pay, incentive & equity design
• Pay equity, internal parity & cost governance
• Labour code compliance & risk mitigation
• Rewards analytics & executive reporting
• Executive stakeholder advisory & influence
• M&A, integration & transformation support

Zinnov is an equal opportunity employer.We celebrate diversity and are committed to building an inclusive workplace. We welcome applications from individuals of all backgrounds, communities, and experiences.