Sales Operations, Associate Director – Global Incentive Compensation Strategy

Summary

Requires significant specialized depth and/or breadth of expertise, conceptual and practical knowledge of theories and principles, and applies general knowledge of business and industry practices within sales operations. Solves unique problems that have a broad impact on the business. Leads operational support to sales management. Oversees planning and coordination of projects to improve the operational efficiency and effectiveness of the sales force. Develops processes and procedures to support the sales process and participates in the development of requirements for sales support systems. Develops, implements and analyzes compensation programs for sales personnel, including sales plan analysis and design, calculation of plan payments and trend analysis. Leads projects or initiatives across areas with notable risk and complexity to achieve milestones and objectives. Exercises considerable creativity, foresight, and judgment in conceiving, planning, and executing on initiatives. Contributes to the development of functional strategy.

Job Description

Why This Role Matters:

At Wolters Kluwer, we operate at the intersection of deep expertise, technology, and global scale. As our Go to Market (GTM) strategies evolve across businesses, segments, and regions, we are building an Incentive Compensation Center of Excellence (CoE) that brings clarity, fairness, and strategic intent to how our GTM teams are rewarded.

The Associate Director of Global Incentive Compensation Strategy plays a critical role in this effort. This is a senior advisory position, designed for someone who combines strong incentive compensation domain expertise with a consulting mindset, financial rigor, and comfort influencing executive stakeholders.

This role is ideal for a former consultant and operator who enjoys shaping strategy, guiding leaders through complex decisions, and designing incentive frameworks that align behavior, economics, and long-term growth — without owning day to day processing.

This role plays a critical part in ensuring Wolters Kluwer’s incentive strategies reinforce its values, growth ambitions, and commitment to fairness and transparency. The Associate Director of Global Incentive Compensation Strategy helps bridge strategy and execution—ensuring that how sellers are rewarded reflects not only what the business wants to achieve, but how it wants to achieve it.

What You’ll Do:

Serve as a Strategic Advisor

• Act as a trusted thought partner to cross divisional GTM, Revenue Operations, and Finance leaders

• Provide guidance on commission plan design, SPIFFs, and incentive strategies aligned to GTM strategy, coverage models, and revenue motions

• Help leaders navigate tradeoffs between simplicity, motivation, cost, fairness, and scalability

Shape Enterprise Incentive Strategy

• Translate priorities into incentive designs that align to guiding principles and design frameworks

• Define guardrails that align to best practices for sales compensation across roles, segments, regions, and revenue models (e.g. recurring, transactional, consumption)

• Bring external perspective and insight informed by SaaS, technology, and data driven business models from global organizations

Partner with the Incentive Compensation CoE

• Support strategy and governance that can be enabled by Xactly

• Act as a bridge between business strategy and platform execution, without being a system administrator

• Lead and/or contribute to enablement, documentation, and leadership narratives that make incentive programs understandable and credible

• Adopt Xactly and other technologies to drive efficiencies at scale for incentive comp design

Apply Financial and Scenario Thinking

• Perform or review financial and scenario modeling related to commission plans, SPIFFs, and incentive changes

• Partner with Finance to assess cost, ROI, risk, and sustainability of incentive strategies

• Help senior leaders understand implications, not just mechanics; guide to scalable yet effective incentive strategies

Influence Through Credibility

• Facilitate structured discussions with senior stakeholders around sensitive or high impact decisions

• Bring clarity, neutrality, and sound judgment to ambiguous and/or politically complex environments

• Operate with executive presence, integrity, and follow through

What Success Looks Like

• Leaders seek this role out for guidance before making incentive decisions

• Sales compensation strategies clearly support GTM strategy and operating models

• Incentive designs are consistent, scalable, and financially defensible

• The Sales Compensation CoE is viewed as an advisory asset — not just an execution function

Who We’re Looking For:

Experience & Expertise

• 8+ years of experience in Sales/Incentive Compensation, Revenue Operations, Sales Strategy, and/or Management Consulting, with clear exposure to incentive design and GTM economics

• Background in consulting, advisory, or enterprise transformation preferred

• Experience in growth-oriented organizations with multiple revenue models (e.g. recurring, transactional, consumption, etc)

• Comfort operating in global, matrixed environments

Skill Set

• Deep understanding of commission structures, SPIFFs, quota mechanics, territory planning, and seller behavior

• Strong financial and analytical acumen; able to build or interpret cost and scenario models, and translate to actionable designs

• Experience collaborating with RevOps, Finance, Sales, HR, Legal, IT, etc

• Experience with Works Council governing bodies

• Working familiarity with Salesforce, ERPs and enterprise compensation platforms (e.g., Xactly), with appreciation for governance and process integrity

Leadership & Presence

• Executive level communication skills; credible with senior leadership

• Known for sound judgment, integrity, and balanced decision making

• Comfortable advising without direct authority

• Values clarity, fairness, and thoughtful design over complexity

To maintain a fair and genuine hiring process, we kindly ask that all candidates participate in interviews without the assistance of AI tools or external prompts. Our interview process is designed to assess your individual skills, experiences, and communication style. We value authenticity and want to ensure we’re getting to know you—not a digital assistant. To help maintain this integrity, we ask to remove virtual backgrounds and include in-person interviews in our hiring process. Please note that use of AI-generated responses or third-party support during interviews will be grounds for disqualification from the recruitment process.

Applicants may be required to appear onsite at a Wolters Kluwer office as part of the recruitment process.

Compensation:

Compensation range listed is based on primary location of the position.  Actual base salary offer is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skills, experience and actual hiring location. Your recruiter can share more information about the specific offer for the job location during the hiring process. 

Wolters Kluwer offers a wide variety of competitive benefits and programs to help meet your needs and balance your work and personal life, including but not limited to: Medical, Dental, & Vision Plans, 401(k), FSA/HSA, Commuter Benefits, Tuition Assistance Plan, Vacation and Sick Time, and Paid Parental Leave. Full details of our benefits are available upon request.