Finance Associate Director - Sales Compensation MI, Intelligence & Execution

The Associate Director, Sales Compensation (Intelligence & Execution) will serve as the global owner for sales compensation operations, accountable for the accuracy, governance, and financial integrity of commission payments across the end-to-end process. This high-accountability role requires sound financial judgment, advanced analytical capability, strong control discipline, and the resilience to lead through complex, high-pressure monthly payroll cycles, overseeing compensation modeling, stress testing, monthly commission calculations, payroll processing, SOX controls, dispute resolution, clawbacks, recoveries, and plan effectiveness analytics.

The successful candidate will combine strategic foresight with operational excellence, acting as both an operational leader and compliance governor for the commission function. By partnering closely with Sales, Finance, Payroll, Legal, People Partners, and Compliance teams, this individual will ensure sales compensation processes remain accurate, transparent, scalable, and governed by strong financial controls.

Responsibilities and Impact:

This role is a key control and governance leader within global sales compensation operations. By combining financial modeling, process discipline, stakeholder partnership, and strong audit readiness, the Finance Manager helps ensure commission payments are accurate, timely, transparent, and aligned with company policy and financial controls. The role directly supports seller trust, expense predictability, regulatory compliance, and scalable compensation operations.

• Build and execute high-level and detailed scenario modeling and stress-testing frameworks to forecast total plan spend and assess the financial impact of plan adjustments, structural redesigns, or macroeconomic shifts.

• Generate and refine global payout estimates and compensation decision models to support budget alignment.

• Analyze plan effectiveness metrics and partner with Sales leadership to design plan optimization strategies and support annual target-setting frameworks.

• Lead final validation and control overview for global commission payroll processing runs, providing final review and sign-off before submission.

• Evaluate and authorize large payments, non-standard payouts, custom executive incentives, and other high-value commission exceptions.

• Review and approve custom withholding, recovery, non-recoverable draw, guarantee, and clawback protocols in partnership with Payroll, Legal, People Partners, and Compliance teams.

• Sign off on monthly Audit and SOX controls, ensuring internal controls over financial reporting are properly maintained, documented, and audit-ready.

• Perform ongoing risk evaluations related to deal cancellations, retroactive adjustments, clawbacks, unauthorized overrides, and data integrity or security risks.

• Conduct variance analyses, automated sanity testing, and targeted spot-checks to ensure commission calculation accuracy and data integrity.

• Partner with Legal and People Partners to support resolution of sensitive compensation disputes and high-value sales compensation grievances, payout disputes with objectivity and diplomacy.

• Review, evaluate, and approve calculation overrides, custom exception requests, and commission structures tied to Reductions in Force.

• Translate complex commission formulas, crediting rules, and payout outcomes into clear, step-by-step explanations for sales representatives, managers, and senior leaders.

What We’re Looking For:

Basic Required Qualifications:

• 7+ years of relevant experience in sales compensation operations, finance governance, audit, sales operations, corporate financial modeling, or corporate incentive strategy, preferably within a global or multi-national environment.

Technical & Behavioral Capabilities

• Sales Compensation Expertise: Strong understanding of complex sales compensation plan mechanics, including quotas, accelerators, thresholds, caps, splits, crediting rules, draws, guarantees, clawbacks, recoveries, adjustments, SPIFFs, and executive incentive structures.

• Enterprise Commission Architecture: High-level administrative and structural knowledge of enterprise calculation platforms such as Xactly, Varicent, Anaplan, SAP Commissions, or similar systems. Deep understanding of system-wide interactions between rate tables, crediting rules, splits, formulas, and calculation logic.

• Mathematical & Data Modeling: Advanced proficiency of advanced Excel and data modeling, including nested logic, dynamic arrays, Power Query, large dataset reconciliation, variance analysis, scenario modeling, stress testing, and payout forecasting. Script-based reconciliation tools such as VBA or Python/Pandas are a strong advantage.

• Automation & Reconciliation: Practical experience with script-based reconciliation or automation tools. Knowledge of VBA, Python/Pandas, SQL, Alteryx, or equivalent methods is a significant advantage for reconciling large dataset pipelines and identifying calculation or data integrity issues.

• Risk Management & Controls: Ability to identify, evaluate, and mitigate risks related to overpayments, underpayments, cancellations, retroactive adjustments, unauthorized overrides, data integrity issues, data security risks, and non-standard payment exceptions.

• Audit & SOX/ICFR Controls: Demonstrated ability to support SOX and internal controls over financial reporting, including maintaining audit-ready documentation, approvals, and evidence for commission processing.

Operational & Leadership Excellence

• Operational Resilience: High emotional intelligence, composure, and ability to operate effectively during deadline-driven payroll cycles without compromising accuracy, control standards, or employee experience.

• Disciplined Process Adherence: Commitment to maintaining standardized operational checklists, SOPs, and governance workflows to ensure repeatable and auditable payout cycles.

• Strategic Advisory & Influence: Ability to deliver clear, data-backed recommendations to Sales executives, HR leaders, and Finance directors on commission governance, plan effectiveness, and risk mitigation.

• Dispute Resolution & Negotiation: Ability to manage high-value or sensitive sales compensation grievances, payout disputes, calculation overrides, and exception requests with objectivity, diplomacy, confidentiality, and sound judgment.

• Time & Deadline Management: Exceptional self-organization to balance daily query resolutions, ad-hoc dispute investigations, and strategic modeling alongside fixed monthly payroll cutoff dates