Senior Manager, People Operations & Total Rewards
Apply on Safe’s site Posted 3mo ago · via Ashby
Safe Software is looking for a Senior Manager, People Operations & Total Rewards to join our HR team. As Senior Manager, you will own compensation philosophy and architecture, total rewards and benefits, people operations and systems, and AI enablement for People & Culture — company-wide, across GTM, Product & Development, and every other part of the business. This role has real impact: it builds the comp philosophy people trust and the people systems that don't break as Safe scales toward $250M ARR.
We have an immediate opening and are excited to find the right candidate to join our team.
ABOUT THE TEAM
As part of the HR team, you'll join a group of HR professionals who partner directly with business leaders across Safe Software. Unlike our HR Business Partners, who are each embedded with a specific part of the business, this role owns the infrastructure underneath all of them — compensation, benefits, HRIS, and people operations, company-wide. You'll report to the HR Director, lead a team of two, and work closely with the CRO, Finance, and the Sr. HRBPs in GTM and Product & Development, who rely on your data and infrastructure to do their jobs well. Safe builds FME, the data integration platform trusted by 40,000+ organizations in over 100 countries. Profitable, PE-backed, and on a deliberate path to $250M ARR, every part of the business is scaling at once — and none of it holds together without a comp philosophy people trust and people systems that don't break. That infrastructure doesn't exist yet in the form this stage of growth needs. You're building it.
WHAT YOU'LL BE DOING
As Senior Manager, People Operations & Total Rewards, you will operate at all altitudes — one week rebuilding the leveling framework that every promotion decision at Safe will run through for the next three years, the next designing an AI workflow to save the team two hours of repetitive work or recalculating a pay band because one offer would have broken it. Both are the job.
COMPENSATION PHILOSOPHY & ARCHITECTURE
- Own the philosophy, not just the policy. Define what “competitive” means at Safe — market positioning, pay ranges, geographic strategy — and be able to defend it in the room, not just document it. This is a point of view, not a survey result.
- Build the architecture from first principles. Job architecture, leveling, and banding largely don't exist in a form that scales past Safe's current size. You're building the framework that holds the next 500 hires, with AI in mind, not patching the one built for the first 50.
- Run the comp cycle end to end. Merit, profit sharing, variable compensation, commissions — own the calendar, the modeling, manager enablement, and calibration inputs. The Sr. HRBPs in GTM and P&D own the business conversation; you own the philosophy and the infrastructure underneath it.
- Design variable pay where the business needs it most. Partner with the CRO, the Finance team, and the GTM HRBP on OTE structures and quota frameworks. You're not approving their work after the fact — you're building it with them, as the expert in the room on compensation.
TOTAL REWARDS & BENEFITS
- Own the benefits strategy end to end. Plan design, vendor selection, renewal cycles, and annual open enrollment — across a workforce that's about to span more than one country.
- Build for EMEA and US growth. GTM's international build-out is coming. Benefits, pay bands, and statutory requirements need to exist before someone in an international location gets an offer letter, not after.
- Make total rewards legible. Comp statements, benefits guides, and manager talking points that explain the “why,” not just the number. If employees don't understand what they're paid and why, the philosophy isn't working yet.
PEOPLE OPERATIONS & SYSTEMS
- Make the HRIS the source of truth, not a system everyone works around. Own data integrity, workflow automation, and integrations across payroll, benefits, and the tools HR runs on.
- Build the reporting infrastructure the business actually uses. Attrition, comp equity, calibration distributions — the Sr. HRBPs reference this data constantly. If it's wrong, slow, or missing, their advice to leaders is weaker. You build the pipes; they use the water.
- Automate the process debt away. Onboarding paperwork, data entry, manual approvals — map what's manual today and give it back in hours, not workarounds.
AI ENABLEMENT FOR PEOPLE & CULTURE
- Be the AI enablement expert for the HR team. Find the tools, run the pilots, and bring back what works — for comp modeling, people ops workflows, and data synthesis. This is a working part of the job, not a side project: the rest of People & Culture shouldn't have to figure out AI adoption alone.
- Lead the team's own AI transformation, not just your corner of it. Before People & Culture can credibly help the rest of Safe navigate the shift to AI, the team needs to live it first. You build the practices, comfort, and guardrails the rest of HR adopts.
STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP
- Bring a point of view to every comp and data conversation. Pay equity analysis before someone asks for it. A retention read before someone resigns. The craft is in the interpretation, not the spreadsheet.
- Be the person leaders call before the decision is final. Headcount planning, org design, a comp exception someone wants to make — you're in the room helping think it through, not rubber-stamping it afterward.
QUALIFICATIONS, SKILLS, AND COMPETENCIES
Safers come from a variety of backgrounds with a diversity in skills and knowledge. That said, we find that those who are most successful in this role have experience with the following areas.
REQUIRED SKILLS:
- 7+ years in Total Rewards and/or Compensation, with real ownership of People Operations or HRIS
- Built or substantially overhauled a job architecture or leveling framework
- Led a full comp review cycle end to e
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