Senior Compensation Manager

About the role

Waabi continues to scale its breakthrough technology into commercial deployment, and how we attract, reward, and retain exceptional people will be central to the ongoing growth and innovation. This role directly shapes that story: understanding where the business is going and ensuring our compensation structure continues to support that trajectory. You'll be responsible for designing for the current and the future while also being the trusted expert for employees, managers, executives, and company leadership when it comes to our compensation approach and program.

You will...

• Anchor compensation in the business trajectory. Build a deep understanding of Waabi's growth path, including headcount plans, commercialization milestones, geographic expansion, and funding outlook, and use it to guide compensation decisions.
• Design the compensation structure of the future and the plan to get there. Define how base, equity, and variable pay work together to support where the business is headed. Understand today’s structure, set the long-term philosophy, ranges, and grant guidelines, then lay out the roadmap and sequencing to evolve if needed.
• Own the end-to-end annual compensation cycle, including administering the compensation tool and partnering with managers and senior leaders to plan outcomes for their teams. Streamline and scale the process, including through AI tools where they add value.
• Lead market benchmarking for all roles across Waabi's locations, deeply understanding the job architecture and talent marketplace, to effectively complete job matching, survey submissions, and recommending updates to cash and equity ranges.
• Build bottoms-up compensation forecasts with Finance, modeling spend and equity usage against the business plan. Own a variety of modeling and analysis projects to inform decision making.
• Lead compensation enablement and education across the organization. Be the single owner of how Waabi teaches compensation:
  • Training managers on the structure, philosophy and how pay decisions are made
  • Helping employees understand the value and mechanics of their total compensation, including stock options
  • Equipping Recruiting to structure competitive offers
  • Building employee communications that tie it together
• Communicate and advise across company leadership. Translate complex compensation topics into clear recommendations and trade-offs for the executive team. Manage preparation of compensation materials for board review and discussions
• Ensure pay equity and compliance through regular reviews and adherence to pay transparency and reporting requirements across the U.S. and Canada.

Qualifications:

• A bachelor's degree in Economics, Finance, Business, Human Resources, or a related field.
• 7+ years of compensation experience, ideally in high-growth technology companies, including owning annual cycles and multi-location benchmarking.
• Experience designing compensation philosophy, structures and programs (salary, variable and equity).
• Extensive analytical and modeling skills (including building forecasts) as well as expertise in benchmarking and survey methodology (Radford, Carta, Pave, etc).
• Executive presence, with clear, confident communication to employees, managers, and senior executives.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills
• Sound judgment and discretion with sensitive, confidential information.
• Enthusiasm for applying AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude) to improve workflows.
• Open-minded and collaborative team player with the willingness to help others.
• Passionate about self-driving technologies, solving hard problems, and creating innovative solutions.

Bonus/nice to have:

• Experience with private company compensation planning, including planning through company evolution (revenue, funding, and maturity).
• Experience managing preparation for board review of compensation programs.
• Direct experience in HIgh-Tech, AI or AV company, with an understanding of how the talent marketplace shapes pay.
• Hands-on experience using AI tools (e.g., Claude, ChatGPT) to automate compensation analysis, modeling, or cycle workflows.

The US yearly salary range for this role is: $175,000 - $260,000 USD in addition to competitive perks & benefits. Waabi US Inc.’s yearly salary ranges are determined based on several factors in accordance with the Company’s compensation practices. Note: The Company provides additional compensation for employees in this role, including equity incentive awards and an annual performance bonus.