Director, Compensation Programs & Strategy

The opportunity

The Director, Compensation Programs & Strategy is responsible for leading the design, delivery, and evolution of Unity’s global broad-based compensation programs. This role sets the strategic direction for base pay, bonus, equity refresh, job architecture, and recognition programs to ensure they are market competitive, aligned to Unity’s compensation philosophy, and built for scale. The Director partners closely with embedded Total Rewards Consultants, Finance, Legal, HRIS, Talent Strategy, and Recruiting to ensure programs are effectively applied and translated into scalable, business-aligned solutions. Success in this role requires systems thinking, cross-functional collaboration, and a focus on continuous improvement.

What you'll be doing

• Lead the end-to-end strategy and execution of Unity’s annual global compensation cycle (base pay, bonus, equity refresh), including planning, systems readiness, training, and governance.
• Own the global job architecture strategy, including job leveling, titling, career tracks, and integration with market benchmarking and Workday.
• Design and evolve programmatic compensation frameworks, including equity refresh eligibility, bonus plan guardrails, pay-for-performance calibration, and promotion equity guidelines.
• Build and maintain compensation ranges (salary and equity) that reflect market movement, business strategy, and fiscal goals.
• Define the compensation narrative and partner with the VP of Total Rewards and People Communications on manager and employee enablement.
• Develop and maintain tools, templates, and resources that help managers make informed, fair, and consistent compensation decisions.
• Partner closely with Finance on headcount planning inputs, forecast modeling, budget governance, and alignment to company financial targets.
• Serve as the primary point of contact for HR systems and analytics teams to operationalize compensation programs in Workday and across data systems.
• Drive continuous improvement by analyzing program outcomes, gathering feedback, and identifying opportunities to streamline, simplify, and improve.
• Partner with embedded Total Rewards Consultants to ensure compensation programs are applied effectively and customized for business unit needs.
• Own the communication strategy for compensation programs in partnership with HR Communications and Total Rewards Consultants, ensuring program goals, process changes, and key decisions are clearly understood by managers and employees.

What we're looking for

• Significant experience leading global compensation program design and strategy.
• Bachelor’s degree in HR, Finance, Business, or a related field.
• Strong expertise in job architecture, market benchmarking, and pay-for-performance frameworks.
• Experience managing compensation programs in Workday or similar HRIS systems.
• Proven ability to lead complex, cross-functional initiatives with clarity and rigor.
• Strong analytical and communication skills, with the ability to influence senior stakeholders.

You might also have

• CCP (Certified Compensation Professional) certification.
• Experience in high-growth, technology-driven organizations.
• Familiarity with equity compensation programs and practices.
• Demonstrated ability to coach and develop high-performing teams.

Additional information

• Relocation support is not available for this position.
• Work visa/immigration sponsorship is available for this position.

Life at Unity

Unity [NYSE: U] is the leading platform to create and grow games and interactive experiences. Creators, ranging from game developers to artists, architects, automotive designers, infrastructure experts, filmmakers, and more, use Unity to bring their imaginations to life across multiple platforms, from mobile, PC, and console, to spatial computing.

As of the third quarter of 2024, more than 70% of the top 1,000 mobile games were made with Unity, and in 2024, Made with Unity applications had an average of 3.7 billion downloads per month. For more information, please visit www.unity.com.

Unity is a proud equal opportunity employer. We are committed to fostering an inclusive, innovative environment and celebrate our employees across age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or any other protected status in accordance with applicable law. Our differences are strengths that enable us to support the growing and evolving needs of our customers, partners, and collaborators.If you have a disability that means there are preparations or accommodations we can make to help ensure you have a comfortable and positive interview experience, please fill out this form to let us know.

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

This position requires the incumbent to have a sufficient knowledge of English to have professional verbal and written exchanges in this language since the performance of the duties related to this position requires frequent and regular communication with colleagues and partners located worldwide and whose common language is English.

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