Global Sales Compensation Strategy Lead

Workday; United States; Hybrid; USD 175,000 - 311,000; Full time

Job summary

Workday is seeking a leader for the GTM Incentive Compensation team to design and optimize global sales incentive programs, aligning compensation with growth and financial discipline.

You will partner with Sales, Finance, and Revenue Operations to build design frameworks, governance, and AI-enabled analytics that model outcomes, monitor performance, and guide senior leadership. The role requires 10+ years in sales or GTM, 8+ years in compensation design, and proven people leadership.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in sales or GTM functions.
• 8+ years designing direct-seller compensation plans.
• 3+ years people management experience.

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.

Skills

Executive communication

AI adoption

Quota governance

Analytics

Cross-functional collaboration

Job description

Workday is seeking a leader for the GTM Incentive Compensation team to design and optimize global sales incentive programs, aligning compensation with growth and financial discipline.

You will partner with Sales, Finance, and Revenue Operations to build design frameworks, governance, and AI-enabled analytics that model outcomes, monitor performance, and guide senior leadership. The role requires 10+ years in sales or GTM, 8+ years in compensation design, and proven people leadership.