Senior Manager, Sales Incentives

About the role

The Senior Sales Incentive Manager at Western Alliance Bank is responsible for designing, managing, and evolving sales incentive compensation programs across the entire Bank. This role ensures that sales performance is aligned with enterprise strategy, financial objectives, and regulatory expectations. The position partners closely with Sales Leadership, Finance, HR/Total Rewards, IT, Legal, Audit, and Compliance to drive effective incentive design, governance, and execution.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, development, and ongoing refinement of sales incentive plans aligned with enterprise growth objectives and go-to-market strategies across all lines of business.
• Evaluate plan effectiveness and recommend improvements to drive desired sales behaviors, performance outcomes, and retention of top talent.
• Model financial impact, validate plan affordability, and assess payout distributions and performance leverage.
• Establish consistent incentive design standards including measures, thresholds, accelerators, caps, modifiers, and crediting rules.
• Own the annual incentives calendar, including but not limited to plan design updates and approvals, on-time payouts, incentive system/Varicent updates, and other key incentives-related milestones.
• Define and maintain sales role and eligibility frameworks.
• Ensure incentive plans appropriately reflect role responsibilities, performance expectations, and goal structures.
• Partner with Sales Leadership and Compensation to periodically review and evolve roles and plans as the organization changes.
• Ensure sales incentive programs comply with company policies, internal controls, and applicable federal and state regulations.
• Maintain formal documentation, approval processes, governance standards, and exception management protocols.
• Monitor incentive plan payouts to ensure plan compliance across lines of business.
• Own the end-to-end incentive compensation financial lifecycle, including calculation oversight, monthly and quarterly incentive accruals, validation, true-ups, dispute resolution, and payout readiness.
• Develop and monitor performance metrics such as attainment distributions, payout alignment, growth portfolio baselines, and plan effectiveness indicators.
• Analyze sales and incentive data to identify trends, risks, and opportunities for continuous improvement.
• Partner with HRIS, IT, and Sales Leadership to optimize incentive compensation systems and reporting capabilities.
• Develop clear, comprehensive communication materials including plan documents, FAQs, payout examples, incentive estimators, training, and manager toolkits.
• Lead plan rollouts, ensuring sellers and leaders understand plan mechanics, performance expectations, and earning opportunities.
• Deliver training and ongoing guidance to improve clarity, transparency, and adoption of incentive programs.
• Serve as a trusted advisor to senior executives and sales leaders across all lines of business.
• Present incentive strategy recommendations, analyses, and insights to executive stakeholders.
• Translate enterprise business strategy into practical and effective incentive structures.
• Provide people leadership and strategic direction for sales incentive resources supporting the entire Bank and all lines of business.
• Responsible for hiring, coaching, performance management, and development of team members.
• Set priorities, ensure consistent execution, and promote best practices across incentive programs enterprise-wide.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Business, Economics, Human Resources, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Ten or more years of progressive experience in sales incentive compensation design and management within a complex organization.
• Demonstrated experience supporting multiple sales segments and lines of business.
• Demonstrated experience owning or heavily supporting incentive accruals, forecasting, and close processes in partnership with Finance.
• Strong analytical and financial modeling skills with the ability to assess incentive effectiveness and cost.
• Proven ability to influence senior stakeholders and drive cross-functional alignment.
• Excellent written, verbal, and presentation communication skills.