Sr. Manager of Global Compensation

Build a career powered by innovations that matter!  At Novanta, our innovations power technology products that are transforming healthcare and advanced manufacturing—improving productivity, enhancing people’s lives and redefining what’s possible.  We create for our global customers engineered components and sub-systems that deliver extreme precision and performance for a range of mission-critical applications—from minimally invasive surgery to robotics to 3D metal printing.

Novanta is one global team with over 26 offices located in The Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific.  Looking for a great place to work?  You have found it with a culture that embraces teamwork, collaboration and empowerment.  Come explore Novanta.

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 high‑quality, defensible compensation decisions that are aligned with enterprise priorities. The Sr Manager serves as the organization’s 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 multi‑site, multi‑region business.
• Partner closely with Finance to align compensation strategy to operating plans, workforce cost models, and long‑range planning.

2. Broad‑Based Compensation Leadership

• Lead end‑to‑end Annual Compensation Planning cycle (merit, promotions, incentive, equity, adjustments) in Workday, including:
  • Budget development and modeling
  • Guidance and decision frameworks for managers
  • Approvals and post‑cycle 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, manager‑friendly guidance, including:
  • Pay decision frameworks
  • Pay for Performance philosophy
  • Toolkits, playbooks, FAQs, and visual guides
  • Scenario‑based 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 judgment—not 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 executive‑level 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 life’s needs. This position provides a full range of medical, financial, and other benefits to make your quality of life better.

Novanta is proud to be an equal employment opportunity and affirmative action workplace. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, military and veteran status, disability, genetics, or any other category protected by federal law or Novanta policy.

Please call +1 781-266-5700 if you need a disability accommodation for any part of the employment process.