Head of total rewards

About Watershed

Watershed is the enterprise sustainability platform. Companies like Airbnb, Carlyle Group, FedEx, Visa, and Dr. Martens use Watershed to manage climate and ESG data, produce audit-ready metrics for voluntary and regulatory reporting including CSRD, and drive real decarbonization. We are looking for team members who love product-building, want to work hard at a mission-oriented startup, and will collaborate with us in shaping the culture of a growing team.

We have offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Sydney, Mexico City, and remote team members across the US and Europe. We hope that you'll be interested in joining us!

The role

You’ll lead our total rewards efforts at Watershed, overseeing our unique and simple compensation and benefits program, ensuring equitable outcomes and aligning performance with compensation rewards. Specifically, you’ll refine and improve our compensation philosophy and design, implement and communicate our global programs. This is a team of one today owning strategy, planning, modeling and execution. You’ll report to the Head of People, your work will be accountable to the board and founders and you’ll partner closely with HRBPs, finance, recruiting and leaders across the organization. This is a fantastic opportunity for someone who sees themselves as a builder and strategist to help us avoid the pitfalls of a globally scaling organization.

This role will be based in our San Francisco office.

In this role, you will:

• Compensation is the larger emphasis for this role

• Design compensation and benefits programs to align with Watershed’s philosophies

• Identify external marketplace trends and provide expertise in competitive practices to inform program design and development

• Lead compensation benchmarking process including survey participation, market analysis, salary range and structure development globally

• Administer bi-annual compensation processes which includes equity and cash budget modeling, merit and market increases, and market competitiveness review

• Act as a subject matter expert and provide strategic consult to HRBP’s and recruiting team on all thing’s total rewards

• Proactively ensure our offering is competitive to attract and retain talented employees

• Partner with revenue operations team to ensure sales compensation is in-line with company practices

• Communicate and collaborate with leaders across the organization to collect feedback, build trust, and advise on compensation topics from program-level to individual basis, including enablement and advocacy for our evolving compensation philosophy

• Scale benefits offering in 3+ emerging markets

You might be a good fit if you have:

• 10+ years experience in compensation or equivalent capabilities

• Must have tech startup experience

• Strong compensation program design and management experience at technology companies

• Experience running compensation models in Google Sheets or Excel

• Understanding of US and global compensation and benefits practices

• Enthusiasm for operational improvements

• Previous experience supporting a scaling organization at critical stages of growth & expansion (e.g., pre-IPO, M&As, new market entry, etc.)

• Experience working at fast growing companies and comfort with ambiguity

• Desire and ability to be a player coach - everyone is a doer at Watershed!

Must be willing to work from an office 4 days per week (except for remote roles)

Watershed has hub offices in San Francisco, New York, London, and Mexico City and satellite offices in Sydney, Paris, and Berlin. Where we have offices, employees are expected to be in office for 4 days per week. Certain jobs are open to being remote and will be specifically noted on the jobs page and in the job description if so.

What’s the interview process like?

It starts the same for every candidate: getting to know the team members through 1 to 2 conversations about Watershed, your experience, and your interests. Next steps can vary by role, but usual next steps are a skill or experience interview (e.g. a coding interview for an engineer, a portfolio review for a designer, deeper experience call for other roles) which leads to a virtual or in person interview panel. We prioritize transparency and lack of surprise throughout the process.

What if I need accommodations for my interview?

At Watershed, we are dedicated to ensuring an inclusive recruitment process. We provide reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities, long-term conditions, mental health needs, religious observances, neurodivergence, or pregnancy-related support requirements. If you need assistance during your process, please contact your recruiter.