Senior Associate — Incentive Compensation Administration

Career Category

Job Description

Join Amgen's Mission of Serving Patients

At Amgen, if you feel like you're part of something bigger, it's because you are. Our shared mission - to serve patients living with serious illnesses - drives all that we do.

Since 1980, we've helped pioneer the world of biotech in our fight against the world's toughest diseases. With our focus on four therapeutic areas - Oncology, Inflammation, General Medicine, and Rare Disease - we reach millions of patients each year. As a member of the Amgen team, you'll help make a lasting impact on the lives of patients as we research, manufacture, and deliver innovative medicines to help people live longer, fuller, happier lives.

Our award-winning culture is collaborative, innovative, and science-based. If you have a passion for challenges and the opportunities that lie within them, you'll thrive as part of the Amgen team. Join us and transform the lives of patients while transforming your career.

What you will do

Let’s do this. Let’s change the world. In this vital role, the Senior Associate, Incentive Compensation Administration will independently manage the accurate and timely administration of assigned field incentive compensation (IC) plans and compensation cycles. The role will lead end-to-end IC operational activities, including data intake and validation, eligibility and crediting, calculation review, payment-file preparation, payout coordination, reconciliations, exception management, reporting, and post-payment validation in accordance with approved plan rules and governance requirements.

The Senior Associate will take ownership of complex data and operational issues, analyze payout trends and potential outliers, conduct plan health checks, and partner with cross-functional teams to drive issues through resolution. The role will independently manage field inquiries and escalations, maintain strong process controls and documentation, and identify opportunities to improve data quality, reporting, automation, operational efficiency, and the overall field experience.

This position works within the Incentive Compensation Administration team in Field Excellence and partners closely with onshore business stakeholders and cross-functional teams across Incentive Compensation, Field Effectiveness, data management, Finance, HR, Payroll, IT, and external partners. The role will coordinate assigned projects and support new plan implementations, field realignments, product launches, annual planning cycles, mid-cycle changes, and platform enhancements, while providing guidance and quality review for Associate-level work as needed.

Responsibilities

IC Administration and Analytical Ownership

• Independently administer assigned field IC plans and recurring compensation cycles, ensuring accurate and timely execution in accordance with approved plan rules, governance requirements, and business timelines.
• Lead end-to-end operational activities, including data intake, eligibility validation, crediting, calculation review, payment-file preparation, payout coordination, exception management, and post-payment validation.
• Extract, transform, validate, and reconcile IC-related data from multiple systems; investigate complex discrepancies and drive timely resolution with cross-functional partners.
• Produce and interpret IC operational reports, including payout summaries, eligibility and attainment reports, payment reconciliations, payroll reports, master tables, and exception logs.
• Conduct regular plan health checks by monitoring payout trends, processing timelines, data issues, field inquiries, and potential outliers; identify risks and recommend corrective actions.

Governance, Documentation, and Field Support

• Ensure IC activities comply with internal controls, legal guidance, privacy requirements, applicable industry regulations, and audit-readiness standards.
• Create, maintain, and periodically review SOPs, QC checklists, business-rule documents, process flows, exception logs, approvals, and records of key decisions.
• Independently manage and resolve field inquiries and escalations related to plan rules, eligibility, crediting, goal attainment, calculations, and payments.
• Communicate complex IC outcomes clearly and empathetically to field employees, business stakeholders, and cross-functional partners.

Project Management and Stakeholder Partnership

• Support implementation of new IC plans, realignments, product launches, mid-cycle changes, and annual planning cycles; partner with internal teams and vendors to ensure accurate, timely execution.
• Manage assigned project plans, milestones, dependencies, risks, actions, and deliverables using Planner or other project-management tools.
• Partner with onshore business stakeholders, including Sales, Field Excellence, Finance, and other teams, to provide status updates, coordinate decisions, and align on requirements and timelines.
• Identify and implement improvements to IC processes, data controls, reporting, documentation, automation, and field experience.
• Support system enhancements, testing, new reporting requirements, and IC platform updates; provide guidance and quality review for Associate-level work as needed.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree and 3-5 years of experience in incentive compensation administration, sales operations, compensation operations, finance operations, analytics, or a related field.

Preferred Qualifications

• Relevant bio/pharmaceutical, healthcare, consulting, or commercial operations experience.
• Demonstrated experience supporting end-to-end field IC administration, including eligibility, crediting, calculation validation, payment processing, reporting, reconciliations, and inquiry resolution.
• Strong analytical ability to work with large, complex datasets, identify root causes, and resolve data or process issues.
• Advanced SQL and Microsoft Excel skills
• Proficiency with industry-leading incentive compensation administration platforms is preferred.
• Demonstrated ownership and accountability for deliverables, issue resolution, risk escalation, and timely completion of commitments.
• Ability to translate business rules into data logic, validation checks, and clear administrative procedures.
• Strong stakeholder-management, written, verbal, and presentation skills.
• Good to have IC health checks, plan modeling and design, contest design, goal setting experience