Sales Compensation Design Manager
Design, Sales & Business Development
Sunnyvale, CA, USA
USD 116k-189k / year + Equity
Posted on Feb 14, 2026
Company Description
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network, built to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. Our products help people make powerful connections, discover exciting opportunities, build necessary skills, and gain valuable insights every day. We’re also committed to providing transformational opportunities for our own employees by investing in their growth. We aspire to create a culture that’s built on trust, care, inclusion, and fun – where everyone can succeed.
Join us to transform the way the world works.
Job Description
At LinkedIn, our approach to flexible work is centered on trust and optimized for culture, connection, clarity, and the evolving needs of our business. The work location of this role is hybrid, meaning it will be performed both from home and from a LinkedIn office on select days, as determined by the business needs of the team.
This role can be based in our Sunnyvale or San Francisco office.
As a Sales Compensation Design Lead, you guide compensation strategy for business units, focusing on growth opportunities that support the go-to-market strategy. You coordinate and optimize sales compensation programs, collaborating with leaders in Sales, Sales Ops, HR, and Policy to develop effective, competitive, and compliant structures.
The ideal candidate uses data and has deep experience in incentive design and commission modeling, offering strategic guidance, analyzing results, and resolving business challenges.
Responsibilities:
Basic Qualifications:
The pay range for this role is $116,000 to $189,000. Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, depth of experience, certifications, and specific work location. This may be different in other locations due to differences in the cost of labor.
The total compensation package for this position may also include annual performance bonus, stock, benefits and/or other applicable incentive compensation plans. For more information, visit https://careers.linkedin.com/benefits.
Additional Information
Equal Opportunity Statement
We seek candidates with a wide range of perspectives and backgrounds and we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. LinkedIn considers qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, citizenship, or any other legally protected class.
LinkedIn is committed to offering an inclusive and accessible experience for all job seekers, including individuals with disabilities. Our goal is to foster an inclusive and accessible workplace where everyone has the opportunity to be successful.
If you need a reasonable accommodation to search for a job opening, apply for a position, or participate in the interview process, connect with us at accommodations@linkedin.com and describe the specific accommodation requested for a disability-related limitation.
Reasonable accommodations are modifications or adjustments to the application or hiring process that would enable you to fully participate in that process. Examples of reasonable accommodations include but are not limited to:
LinkedIn will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant. However, employees who have access to the compensation information of other employees or applicants as a part of their essential job functions cannot disclose the pay of other employees or applicants to individuals who do not otherwise have access to compensation information, unless the disclosure is (a) in response to a formal complaint or charge, (b) in furtherance of an investigation, proceeding, hearing, or action, including an investigation conducted by LinkedIn, or (c) consistent with LinkedIn's legal duty to furnish information.
San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance
Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, LinkedIn will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
Pay Transparency Policy Statement
As a federal contractor, LinkedIn follows the Pay Transparency and non-discrimination provisions described at this link: https://lnkd.in/paytransparency.
Global Data Privacy Notice for Job Candidates
Please follow this link to access the document that provides transparency around the way in which LinkedIn handles personal data of employees and job applicants: https://legal.linkedin.com/candidate-portal.
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network, built to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. Our products help people make powerful connections, discover exciting opportunities, build necessary skills, and gain valuable insights every day. We’re also committed to providing transformational opportunities for our own employees by investing in their growth. We aspire to create a culture that’s built on trust, care, inclusion, and fun – where everyone can succeed.
Join us to transform the way the world works.
Job Description
At LinkedIn, our approach to flexible work is centered on trust and optimized for culture, connection, clarity, and the evolving needs of our business. The work location of this role is hybrid, meaning it will be performed both from home and from a LinkedIn office on select days, as determined by the business needs of the team.
This role can be based in our Sunnyvale or San Francisco office.
As a Sales Compensation Design Lead, you guide compensation strategy for business units, focusing on growth opportunities that support the go-to-market strategy. You coordinate and optimize sales compensation programs, collaborating with leaders in Sales, Sales Ops, HR, and Policy to develop effective, competitive, and compliant structures.
The ideal candidate uses data and has deep experience in incentive design and commission modeling, offering strategic guidance, analyzing results, and resolving business challenges.
Responsibilities:
- Lead global sales compensation strategy in partnership with business units, delivering a consolidated perspective on plan design, annual and midyear planning, pilots, and SPIFs
- Apply strong commercial and financial acumen to evaluate the impact of compensation decisions on performance, cost, and behavior.
- Partner with Sales Leadership, Sales Operations, Finance, HR, and GSC Policy teammates to understand business needs, identify challenges, and deliver data driven driven compensation solutions.
- Translate complex compensation concepts into clear, compelling insights and recommendations for senior technical and nontechnical stakeholders.
- Serve as a trusted advisor to business and functional leaders on compensation strategy and best practices.
- Collaborate with the Global Sales Design Team on the annual design and planning calendar, ensuring alignment across Systems, Operations, and Reporting teams.
- Assess change impacts and partner with Enablement to develop content to ensure stakeholder readiness and adoption.
- Ensure incentive compensation programs comply with internal policies, regulatory requirements, labor laws, and financial reporting standards.
- Partner with Global Technology Solutions and Global Operations teams to embed efficiency, scalability, and effectiveness into compensation design principles.
- Maintain deep working knowledge of GSC systems, tools, and operational processes to support end-to-end toend program execution.
- Analyze current state and future statestate and futurestate compensation programs (design, policy, governance, enablement) to drive coordinated improvements, track outcomes, and measure impact.
- Drive continuous improvement across compensation analytics, processes, and tools.
Basic Qualifications:
- 5+ years of experience in Sales Compensation design roles, including incentive compensation plan design for SaaS bussing using consumption-based compensation models within digital advertising or technology sectors.
- 4+ years of experience in sales compensation strategy and incentive plan modeling, with program management, stakeholder partnership, and data analysis skills—including using SQL to identify trends in large, complex datasets and communicate insights cross‑functionally.
- 6+ years of experience with sales compensation business process management and sales compensation operations.
- Ability to strongly collaborate and positively influence cross-functional leaders and stakeholders involved in the incentive compensation management process, including Sales Leadership, Sales Operations, Systems, Engineering, Human Resources, Policy, and GSC Enablement.
- Demonstrated experience with change management in a fast-paced, technology-paced, paced, technology-centric organization.
- Self-starter with a proactive, “get things done” mentality and the ability to focus on systemwide vs. wide vs. subsystem solutions system system solutions.
- Ability to logically and efficiently structure solutions to ambiguous problems, conduct impact analysis, identify key insights, and recommend an action plan.
- Ability to lean in and partner with all business levels to make decisions and deliver solutions that meet desired outcomes.
- Proficiency in Microsoft 365 tools including Power BI, Excel, PowerPoint.
- Robust planning and time management skills with the ability to manage multiple deliverables to tight timelines management skills with the ability to manage multiple deliverables to tight timelines.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
- Strategic Thinking
- Decision-Making
- Innovation & Project Management
- Financial Acumen
- Stakeholder Management & Trusted Advisor
The pay range for this role is $116,000 to $189,000. Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, depth of experience, certifications, and specific work location. This may be different in other locations due to differences in the cost of labor.
The total compensation package for this position may also include annual performance bonus, stock, benefits and/or other applicable incentive compensation plans. For more information, visit https://careers.linkedin.com/benefits.
Additional Information
Equal Opportunity Statement
We seek candidates with a wide range of perspectives and backgrounds and we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. LinkedIn considers qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, citizenship, or any other legally protected class.
LinkedIn is committed to offering an inclusive and accessible experience for all job seekers, including individuals with disabilities. Our goal is to foster an inclusive and accessible workplace where everyone has the opportunity to be successful.
If you need a reasonable accommodation to search for a job opening, apply for a position, or participate in the interview process, connect with us at accommodations@linkedin.com and describe the specific accommodation requested for a disability-related limitation.
Reasonable accommodations are modifications or adjustments to the application or hiring process that would enable you to fully participate in that process. Examples of reasonable accommodations include but are not limited to:
- Documents in alternate formats or read aloud to you
- Having interviews in an accessible location
- Being accompanied by a service dog
- Having a sign language interpreter present for the interview
LinkedIn will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant. However, employees who have access to the compensation information of other employees or applicants as a part of their essential job functions cannot disclose the pay of other employees or applicants to individuals who do not otherwise have access to compensation information, unless the disclosure is (a) in response to a formal complaint or charge, (b) in furtherance of an investigation, proceeding, hearing, or action, including an investigation conducted by LinkedIn, or (c) consistent with LinkedIn's legal duty to furnish information.
San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance
Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, LinkedIn will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
Pay Transparency Policy Statement
As a federal contractor, LinkedIn follows the Pay Transparency and non-discrimination provisions described at this link: https://lnkd.in/paytransparency.
Global Data Privacy Notice for Job Candidates
Please follow this link to access the document that provides transparency around the way in which LinkedIn handles personal data of employees and job applicants: https://legal.linkedin.com/candidate-portal.