The RoleReporting to the VP of Revenue Operations, the Sales Commissions Lead owns sales compensation end-to-end: plan strategy and design, field communication, dispute resolution, forecasting of commission expense, and the systems that turn closed deals and usage into accurate, trusted payouts.
This is not a pure admin seat and not a blank-slate build. You inherit a working in-house commissions stack and extend it - plan docs, calculators, data pipelines, reporting, and payout workflows - while partnering tightly with FP&A, HR/People Ops, Sales leadership, and Data Engineering. You will own compensation for a rapidly scaling GTM org (300+ commissionable sellers across pre-sales and post-sales roles).
Consumption and hybrid commit + usage economics are core to how we sell and how we pay. The right candidate has already owned commissions in a usage-based or hybrid commercial model - not only license ARR - and can design plans that drive the right field behavior without breaking Finance trust.
The right candidate is an AI-native builder: hands-on with agentic tools (Cursor, Claude Code, or equivalent), shipping automation into the commissions operating system rather than managing a spreadsheet forever.
ResponsibilitiesPlan Strategy & Design- Own sales compensation plan strategy and execution across AE, manager, and pre-/post-sales overlay roles.
- Design and iterate consumption-aware and hybrid commit + usage plans that align seller incentives with company goals (new logos, expansion, and healthy revenue mix).
- Partner with Sales leadership, FP&A, and HR on plan changes, mid-period policy decisions, and clear field communication - including how changes are grandfathered and measured after the fact.
Payout Operations & Trust- Own the quarter close for commissions: eligibility, calculations, exceptions, audits, and payout packages Sales and Finance will stand behind.
- Run dispute resolution with judgment - protect plan integrity while staying credible with FLMs and reps.
- Maintain definitional clarity (what counts as commissionable production, how credit is assigned, how overlays interact) and keep plan language, exhibits, and systems in sync.
Systems, Forecasting & Automation- Inherit and extend our in-house commissions tooling and data pipelines - do not rip-and-replace for a vendor by default.
- Drive end-to-end automation of plan modeling, commission forecasting, attainment reporting, and payout production.
- Partner with Data Engineering and GTM Engineering on source-of-truth data (CRM, billing/usage, roster/quotas) so calculations are reproducible and auditable.
Cross-Functional Partnership- Be the commissions point of contact for Sales VPs/FLMs, FP&A (commission expense and accruals), HR (exhibits, offers, terminations), and Data Eng.
- Produce executive-ready views of commission cost, plan health, and incentive risk - recommendations, not just tables.
AI-Native Operations- Build agentic workflows into how commissions runs: rule interpretation, edge-case triage, rep-facing explanations, regression checks on plan changes, and automated reporting.
- Raise the bar for what "done" looks like: machine-readable plan logic, versioned assumptions, and tooling the field can self-serve against.
Qualifications- 7+ years in sales commissions, incentive compensation, or sales ops with deep commissions ownership; senior IC depth at a P4-P5 equivalent
- Has familiarity with and owned multiple steps of end-to-end commission (plan design + payout ops), not only one side of the house
- Hands-on experience designing and administering plans in a consumption-based or hybrid commit + usage commercial model
- Strong systems builder: SQL (or equivalent) against CRM/billing data; comfortable extending in-house calculators and pipelines rather than only operating a packaged ICM tool
- Proven cross-functional operator with Sales, FP&A, HR, and technical partners - can say no to a bad exception and still keep trust
- Actively building with AI/agentic tools in current work; can name specific automation they've shipped (not "I use ChatGPT")
- Excellent written communication: can explain plan mechanics to a rep in plain language and to Finance in audit-ready form
Preferred- Experience at an AI/ML infrastructure, developer tools, or API-first company
- Has scaled commissions through a high-growth headcount ramp (hundreds of sellers)
- Familiarity with manager overrides, overlay roles (e.g. SAs / field engineers), marketplace/channel credit, and self-serve → sales-assisted conversion credit
- Prior ownership of commission expense forecasting / accruals partnership with FP&A
