Director of Sales Incentives & Compensation Strategy

Workday, Inc.; Austin (TX); Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Workday, Inc. is seeking a Director of Sales Compensation Strategy to lead a global team responsible for designing and optimizing annual and in-year incentive plans for direct sellers and overlay roles.

You will align compensation with Workday’s GTM priorities, including AI offerings, and collaborate with Finance and Revenue Operations to deploy quota-setting and governance across territories. You will mentor design teams, advance analytics, and translate complex pay concepts into clear guidance

Qualifications

• Minimum of 10 years’ experience in sales or GTM functions.
• Minimum of 8 years in sales compensation plan design (annual and in-year) for direct sellers and overlay roles.
• Minimum of 3 years managing people.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end design of annual and in-year compensation plans for direct sellers and overlay roles.
• Align compensation structures with Workday's GTM priorities, including new business, expansion, retention, and AI offerings.
• Design pay curves, accelerators, and performance levers that incent the right behaviors while managing financial risk.
• Partner with Finance and Revenue Operations on quota-setting methodology and deployment.
• Ensure compensation mechanics align with territories, quotas, and fiscal planning.
• Support governance processes for true-ups, exceptions, and complex deals.
• Identify sales performance gaps and design targeted incentives such as SPIFFs and pilots.
• Measure incentive effectiveness and iterate based on data and results.
• Build and maintain compensation analytics to model outcomes before rollout and monitor performance during the year.
• Own dashboards that track attainment, payouts, risk, and variance.
• Partner with data teams to ensure reliable and scalable compensation data infrastructure.
• Play a key role in Workday's Compensation Governance processes.
• Act as a trusted advisor to senior leaders in Sales, Finance, and Revenue Operations.
• Translate complex compensation concepts into clear, actionable insights.
• Continuously improve processes across the full sales comp lifecycle.
• Partner with activation teams to land compensation enablement and change management for the global Sales team, including AI‑assisted communications, FAQ generation, and plan-acceptance workflows.
• Partner with the Compensation Administration and Operations Teams to ensure design intent translates into accurate, auditable payouts.

Skills

Sales / GTM experience

Sales compensation design

People management

Executive advisory

Analytical / AI adoption

Governance frameworks

Job description

Workday, Inc. is seeking a Director of Sales Compensation Strategy to lead a global team responsible for designing and optimizing annual and in-year incentive plans for direct sellers and overlay roles.

You will align compensation with Workday’s GTM priorities, including AI offerings, and collaborate with Finance and Revenue Operations to deploy quota-setting and governance across territories. You will mentor design teams, advance analytics, and translate complex pay concepts into clear guidance