Sales Compensation Insights Manager
Posted 2025-03-15Microsoft is on a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our culture is centered on making a difference by being customer obsessed, diverse yet inclusive and thinking as one Microsoft.<br><br>The Worldwide Incentive Compensation (WWIC) team mission is to Enable Strategy, Motivate Sellers, Reward Results. In pursuit of this mission our team designs, implements, and delivers variable incentive-based sales compensation plans for more than 25,000 sellers, sales leaders, and consultants across Microsoft. We are hiring a Sales Compensation Insights Manager to join the team.<br><br>The Sales Compensation Insights Manager leads conversations for Enabling and Executing Decisions through a Logical Data Driven conversation and a One Microsoft approach to success. In addition, the Analyst is responsible for providing business insights based upon performance of sellers to field/segment leaders and executives, business partnering with field/segments on Incentive Compensation topics, driving continuous process improvement through review and analysis of incentive compensation performance and their effectiveness. The results driven by the Insights Manager will be highly visible and the subject matter of executive deliberations - this requires the individual to be extremely articulate in communication, both written and verbal, and must be able to support answering question from business partners.<br><br><strong>Responsibilities<br><br></strong>Compensation Consulting<br><br><ul><li>Leverages a deep understanding of compensation design principles, levers, and mechanics to design and/or apply incentive compensation plans.</li><li>Aligns plans with strategic business objectives across disciplines to promote high ROI (e.g., smart risks, deliver within cost parameters, inspire participant action).</li><li>Integrates milestones and expected deliverables into plans, and proactively considers dependencies (e.g., securing funding, including operational funds), issues, and risks.<br><br></li></ul>Stakeholder Management<br><br><ul><li>Builds trusted advisor partnerships with cross-functional leaders and managers, representing the organization to area leadership.</li><li>Begins to accomplish initiatives and serve sales leaders through influencing cross-functional (e.g., finance, business/engineering groups, HR, sales segments) and multi-country team members.</li><li>Advocates for their stakeholders and provides value through creative problem-solving. Partners with other sales compensation teams to design, implement, and oversee plans/programs that are customer centric.</li><li>Proactively identifies and addresses broader business needs from a compensation perspective.<br><br></li></ul>Compensation Strategy<br><br><ul><li>Leverages a deep understanding of sales strategies across stakeholder group(s).</li><li>Acts as a thought leader to creatively reinforce strategy through compensation plans, quotas, and sales models that motivate seller behavior.</li><li>Informs alignment between sales compensation plans and the organization?s compensation and business strategies.</li><li>Broadens awareness of products, sales plays, and compete scenarios from across the market.</li><li>Acts as a trusted advisor for their field representatives.</li><li>Synthesizes insights and outcomes to share broadly across the leadership team as the voice of the field.</li><li>Drives leader engagement in determining plan effectiveness and owning participant experiences.</li><li>Drives local sales contests to ensure alignment with global strategy.<br><br></li></ul>Business Analytics<br><br><ul><li>Works closely with stakeholders and Sales leadership to provide rigorous quantitative analysis and modeling related to compensation programs and plan performance.</li><li>Leverages analysis of performance to identify and recommend appropriate actions (e.g., correction of errors, acceleration where seeing success) based on trends and insights.</li><li>Leads scenario modeling and analyses of incentive compensation plan designs to assess legal and financial risks.</li><li>Uses mathematical and statistical modeling to provide recommendations that are in line with specific leader business challenges and inform data-driven outcomes, including operational and financial cost implications. </li><li>Builds cohesive, data-driven stories to solve compensation related problems, simplifying the complex and connecting dots across available data.</li><li>Frames insights and caters analytical storytelling to the audience.</li><li>Develops sales performance reports and/or data visualizations to communicate sales compensation results and quantify business impact across the organization. <br><br></li></ul>Innovation and Continuous Improvement<br><br><ul><li>Drives innovative processes and tools, including quota forecasting, standardizing workflows, tool mechanics, and functionality.</li><li>Acts as a functional subject matter expert, leveraging industry-wide perspective and competitor trends to influence future compensation processes.</li><li>Synthesizes feedback from team members and sellers regarding experiences and potential improvements.</li><li>Drives continuous process improvements and in-flight changes through the review and analysis of incentive compensation performance.<br><br></li></ul>Governance and Compliance<br><br><ul><li>Leads efforts to interpret new and emerging business needs, compliance requirements, governance policies, and legislation, and applies findings across sales compensation programs.</li><li>Assesses complex programs for potential risk, making recommendations to align programs with guidelines and compliance strategies.</li><li>Identifies control measures and governance needs and helps to design governance and compliance processes.<br><br></li></ul>Specialty Responsibilities<br><br><ul><li>Uses statistical models and machine learning algorithms to develop and deliver quotas.</li><li>Completes data mining and analysis, forecasting, and modeling to support the development of complex segment or area quotas.</li><li>Engages with stakeholders to evaluate risk and feasibilities of quota setting.</li><li>Communicates findings with stakeholders to drive broader quota setting processes.</li><li>Acts as a point of contact to explain quota methodology, data sources, and coverage models across teams.</li><li>Manages and drives understanding of pay for performance philosophy, and owns cost portfolio management insights (e.g., total sales compensation costs and associated expenses), leading and reporting out initiatives across groups. Considers overall cost impact and risks (e.g., legal, financial).<br><br></li></ul><strong>Qualifications<br><br></strong>Required/Minimum Qualifications<br><br><ul><li>Bachelor's Degree in Business, Finance, Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, Economics, or related field AND 5+ years experience in compensation, business management and operations, finance and analytics, human resources and people analytics, marketing, or sales strategy</li><ul><li>OR equivalent experience.<br></li></ul></ul><strong>Additional Or Preferred Qualifications<br><br></strong><ul><li>Master of Business Administration Degree or Master's Degree in Finance, Computer Science, Data Science Engineering, or related field</li><li>3+ years experience working in a matrixed organization, preferably in the technology industry.</li><li>1+ year(s) project leadership/management experience.</li><li>3+ years experience modeling data or statistical forecasting using software packages (e.g., ADX/Azure Stack, SQL, R, Python, Excel).<br><br></li></ul>Sales Compensation IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $91,800 - $178,800 per year.<br><br>There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $117,900 - $195,000 per year.<br><br>Sales Compensation IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $112,200 - $194,800 per year.<br><br>There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $142,200 - $213,200 per year.<br><br>Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay<br><br>#EOJOBS<br><br>Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.