Director, Incentive Compensation

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If you don’t think you meet all of the criteria below but are still interested in the job, please apply. Nobody checks every box - we’re looking for candidates that are particularly strong in a few areas, and have some interest and capabilities in others.

We are seeking a strategic leader for GTM Incentive Compensation to lead the design and execution of global incentive programs that align seller behavior with company strategy, improve GTM productivity, and support efficient growth. This leader will play a central role in evolving our compensation model as we transition toward consumption-based pricing and scale the business.

INCENTIVE COMPENSATION STRATEGY & DESIGN

• Design and evolve global incentive compensation plans that are simple, motivating, financially sound, and aligned with company priorities.
• Translate GTM strategy, role expectations, and business objectives into clear measures, mechanics, and payout structures.

CONSUMPTION MODEL TRANSFORMATION

• Lead the redesign of incentive plans to support a consumption-based GTM model, balancing customer acquisition, committed value, adoption, realized usage, expansion, and retention.
• Establish clear accountability and crediting across the teams that influence the full customer lifecycle.

GTM PRODUCTIVITY & COST EFFICIENCY

• Use compensation as a strategic lever to improve seller productivity, return on sales investment, and operating leverage as the company scales.
• Model and manage payout economics, commission expense, and plan ROI while identifying opportunities to reduce complexity and cost.

EXECUTIVE & SALES LEADERSHIP PARTNERSHIP

• Serve as a trusted advisor to GTM and Finance leaders on incentive strategy, plan economics, performance measurement, and organizational trade-offs.
• Bring data-driven recommendations that balance field realities, employee motivation, and long-term company value.

COMPENSATION OPERATIONS & GOVERNANCE

• Own the end-to-end compensation lifecycle, including plan documentation, rollout, crediting, calculation, payout validation, and dispute resolution.
• Establish scalable governance, controls, approval authorities, and exception-management processes that ensure accuracy, consistency, and trust.

ANALYTICS & PLAN EFFECTIVENESS

• Measure plan effectiveness through attainment, payout, productivity, cost, and behavioral analysis.
• Identify unintended incentives, performance gaps, and opportunities to improve plan design throughout the year.

SYSTEMS, DATA & AUTOMATION

• Own the business requirements for incentive compensation systems and supporting integrations across CRM, billing, finance, HR, and payroll.
• Drive automation, data quality, and process improvements that reduce manual effort and improve accuracy and transparency.

CHANGE MANAGEMENT & ENABLEMENT

• Lead clear communication and enablement for compensation plans, ensuring leaders and participants understand both the mechanics and strategic intent.
• Manage major plan and business-model transitions in a way that builds confidence and minimizes disruption.

BASIC REQUIREMENTS:

• 5+ years of experience in Sales Compensation / Incentive Compensation design, with direct ownership of designing, building, or redesigning global incentive comp plans — not just administering or calculating payouts under someone else's plan design.
• Partnering with commissions & strategy design - incentive compensation management (ICM) system (e.g., Xactly, Varicent, CaptivateIQ, Spiff, or similar) assisting with defining requirements, crediting logic, and calculation rules — not just as an end user.
• Demonstrated experience designing or redesigning comp plans around a significant GTM or business-model shift (e.g., new segments, new motions, M&A integration, or a pricing-model transition) rather than only maintaining steady-state annual plans.
• Working knowledge of consumption, usage-based, or hybrid revenue models and how they translate into sales crediting — even if not a perfect match, this is worth a hard screen given how central the pricing transition is to this role; a candidate with zero exposure to non-subscription monetization will have a real learning curve here.
• Experience partnering directly with Sales Finance, Sales Operations, and GTM/Sales leadership to model payout economics, commission expense, and plan ROI — this is a cross-functional, finance-adjacent role, not a purely operational one.

About Kong:

Kong Inc., a leading developer of API and AI connectivity technologies, is building the infrastructure that powers the agentic era. Trusted by the Fortune 500 and startups alike, Kong's unified API and AI platform, Kong Konnect, enables organizations to secure, manage, accelerate, govern, and monetize the flow of intelligence across APIs and AI models.konghq.com.