Novanta

Sr. Manager of Global Compensation

Novanta$152K — $227K *
Business Services
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 7-10 years of progressive compensation experience in a global organization with $1-$2B in revenue
  • Deep expertise in broad-based compensation and sales incentive design
  • Strong analytical skills with advanced Excel proficiency
  • Proven interpersonal skills working with Finance and senior leadership
  • Familiarity with global market pricing tools and pay transparency trends
  • CCP or similar certification is preferred

Responsibilities

  • Maintain a consistent global compensation philosophy for balanced growth and profitability
  • Build and govern global job architecture and salary structure frameworks
  • Establish governance standards and market pricing methodologies
  • Lead Annual Compensation Planning in Workday, including budget development and decision frameworks
  • Evolve sales incentive design frameworks for revenue growth and profitability
  • Own the manager compensation education capability for decision quality
  • Collaborate with HR Business Partners on customized compensation solutions

Benefits

  • Full range of medical benefits
  • Financial benefits to improve quality of life
  • Comprehensive support for employees' needs
Full Job Description

The Sr Manager of Global Compensation is a senior individual contributor responsible for designing, building, and governing scalable global compensation frameworks that support growth, margin discipline, and talent retention in a $1–$2B enterprise.

This role owns both compensation strategy and execution across:

  • Broad-based compensation and incentive administration
  • Global job architecture and governance
  • Sales incentive design
  • Manager education and decision enablement

Success in this role requires not only technical expertise and functional leadership, but the ability to educate and equip managers to make highquality, defensible compensation decisions that are aligned with enterprise priorities. The Sr Manager serves as the organizations compensation architect, educator, and trusted advisor, operating with enterprise scope but without direct people management responsibility.

Primary Responsibilities

1. Global Compensation Strategy & Frameworks

  • Maintain a globally consistent, scalable compensation philosophy appropriate for a $1$2B organization balancing growth, profitability, and talent competitiveness.
  • Build and govern global job architecture, leveling, and salary structure frameworks, ensuring clarity, internal equity, and market competitiveness. Evaluate new jobs and provide leveling and pay recommendations to HR, as needed.
  • Establish disciplined market pricing methodologies, governance standards, and decision rights appropriate for a global multisite, multiregion business.
  • Partner closely with Finance to align compensation strategy to operating plans, workforce cost models, and longrange planning.

2. BroadBased Compensation Leadership

  • Lead endtoend Annual Compensation Planning cycle (merit, promotions, incentive, equity, adjustments) in Workday, including:
    • Budget development and modeling
    • Guidance and decision frameworks for managers
    • Approvals and postcycle analysis and insights
  • Ensure pay practices reinforce:
    • Internal equity and role clarity
    • External market competitiveness
    • Compliance with evolving global pay transparency and regulatory requirements
  • Continuously evolve compensation policies to keep pace with business complexity and scale.

3. Sales Incentive Design & Governance

  • Support and evolve sales incentive design frameworks that drive revenue growth, profitability, and the right selling behaviors.
  • Partner with Sales Leadership, Finance, and Commercial Excellence Teams to:
    • Align incentives with quotas, capacity models, and financial targets
    • Ensure plans are executable, understandable, and scalable
    • Establish strong governance, modeling discipline, and analytics

4. Manager Education & Compensation Decision Enablement (Critical Focus)

  • Own the enterprise capability of manager compensation education, recognizing that manager decision quality is essential for trust, equity, and retention.
  • Translate complex compensation concepts into clear, practical, managerfriendly guidance, including:
    • Pay decision frameworks
    • Pay for Performance philosophy
    • Toolkits, playbooks, FAQs, and visual guides
    • Scenariobased guidance for common manager decisions
  • Design and deliver compensation training for people managers, HRBPs, and leadership teams to improve confidence, consistency, and decision quality.
  • Serve as a trusted advisor to leaders, coaching them on tradeoffs, risk, and sound compensation judgmentnot just policy compliance.

5. Governance, Analytics & Enterprise Advisory

  • Collaborate with HR Business Partners to provide customized solutions to drive business objectives.
  • Act as the enterprise authority on compensation risk, equity, and governance.
  • Build and maintain compensation models, dashboards, and insights to support executivelevel decisions.
  • Support M&A activity through:
    • Transition/harmonization activities
    • Integration planning aligned with the enterprise

Required Experience, Education, Skills, Training and Competencies

  • 7-10 years of progressive compensation experience in a global, $1$2B range organization
  • Deep expertise in broad-based compensation, sales incentive design, manager enablement and global compliance.
  • Strong analytical and modeling skills; advanced Excel capability required
  • Proven experience partnering with Finance, HR Business Partners, and senior leadership teams
  • Familiarity with global market pricing tools and pay transparency trends
  • CCP or similar certification preferred

Compensation

  • The salary for this role will range from 152,350.00 - 227,827.00 USD annually based on full-time employment. Salary offers are based on a wide range of factors including but not limited to location, relevant skills, training, experience, education, etc.
  • Certain roles may be eligible for performance-based incentive compensation and/or long-term incentives. Incentives could be discretionary or non-discretionary depending on the plan.
  • Novanta supports all aspects of your lifes needs. This position provides a full range of medical, financial, and other benefits to make your quality of life better.

About Novanta

Novanta Inc. is a leading global supplier of precision photonic and motion control components and subsystems. The company was founded in 1968 and is headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts. Novanta's products are used in a variety of applications, including medical and life sciences, industrial automation, and aerospace and defense. The company operates in North America, Europe, and Asia, and is committed to providing innovative solutions that enable its customers to improve their productivity and performance. Novanta is publicly traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol NOVT.
Learn more about Novanta
Size
2,700 employees
Market Cap
$4.9 billion
Industry
Net Income
$44.5 million
5 Year Trend
+12.9%
Revenue
$590.6 million
NASDAQ

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