Compensation Manager

The Role in a Nutshell:

Chainguard is hiring a Compensation Manager to join our Total Rewards team as a strategic individual contributor. As the company continues to scale rapidly, this role will serve as a key partner to the Global Total Rewards Manager and the broader People team, helping to define and operationalize our compensation philosophy, reviewing and updating our comp bands as needed, and build a world-class global compensation function.

This is a highly cross-functional, high-impact IC role. You will work closely with PBPs, Finance, and Recruiting, and will need to balance strategic thinking with hands-on execution.

What You'll Own

• Lead the annual review of compensation bands, benchmarking against market data (Radford/Pave) and providing recommendations to the business.
• Own and drive the annual Radford compensation survey submission and data output analysis.
• Own compensation planning cycles end-to-end, including bonus and merit cycles, using Pave and/or Workday.
• Partner with Recruiting/PBPs to deliver consistent, competitive offer recommendations and serve as a compensation advisor throughout the candidate lifecycle.
• Support global expansion efforts by establishing competitive, compliant compensation structures across all jurisdictions in which we operate.
• Collaborate with the HRIS team to migrate compensation data from spreadsheets into Workday, improving data integrity and accessibility.
• In your first 90 days, you will assess existing compensation bands, support the Radford survey submission, and build relationships with key stakeholders across PBPs, Finance, and Recruiting.

What We're Looking For

• Demonstrated experience in compensation, total rewards, or a related HR function — ideally at a high-growth tech startup.
• Strong analytical skills; comfortable working with large data sets, building models in Excel/Sheets, and translating data into clear recommendations.
• Experience working with compensation survey data (Radford/Pave strongly preferred).
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills — able to present to and influence senior leadership.
• Comfort operating as both strategist and executor; willing to roll up your sleeves and get things done without a large team beneath you.
• Experience with global compensation, including working in or alongside an EOR (e.g., Remote, Deel) is a strong plus.
• Familiarity with Pave and/or Workday is a strong plus.
• Tech startup experience preferred — you're comfortable with ambiguity, fast pace, and evolving priorities.