Team Manager, Sales Incentives (Global)
About the role
The Team Manager, Sales Incentives (Global) is responsible for leading the day-to-day operations of Pearson's global Sales Incentives function, ensuring the successful execution of incentive programs across all business units and sales organizations. This role serves as the operational leader for the Incentives organization, partnering closely with Sales Leadership, Finance, HR, Payroll, Business Units, RevOps, and Technology teams to deliver accurate, timely, and compliant incentive plans and payouts.
Responsibilities
Incentive Operations Leadership: Lead the day-to-day execution of Pearson's global Sales Incentive programs by managing the operational delivery of all Sales Incentive Plans across Pearson, overseeing monthly and quarterly incentive calculation and payout processes, ensuring payroll readiness and on-time, accurate incentive payments, managing operational calendars, milestones, and service level commitments, monitoring execution risks, and proactively resolving issues. Drive operational consistency across all Business Units.
Business Unit Partnership: Serve as the primary operational partner for Business Units by leading implementation planning and execution, coordinating plan rollouts and communications, managing operational timelines and deliverables, and partnering with Sales Leadership on incentive execution. Provide consultation on operational questions and issue resolution, ensuring alignment between business priorities and incentive administration.
Sales Incentive Governance: Support enterprise governance by maintaining Sales Incentive policies and operational standards, leading approval workflows for incentive plans and exceptions, ensuring compliance with governance requirements, supporting audit readiness and documentation, maintaining operational controls and risk management practices.
Sales Performance Management (SPM): Oversee operational management of the Sales Performance Management platform by coordinating incentive plan implementation, supporting system testing and validation, managing production releases, partnering with Technology and vendors, ensuring data quality and system accuracy, driving automation opportunities.
Payout Processing: Oversee end-to-end incentive payment operations by reviewing calculation outputs, validating payout accuracy, coordinating payroll submissions, resolving payment issues, managing payout approvals, and supporting finance reconciliation.
People Leadership: Lead and develop a high-performing Incentives team through direct people management, coaching and mentoring, performance management, hiring and onboarding, career development, capacity planning, succession planning, and employee engagement. Create an environment focused on accountability, collaboration, continuous improvement, and operational excellence.
Qualifications
Bachelor's degree in Business, Finance, Human Resources, Operations, or related field.
8+ years of experience in Sales Compensation, Sales Incentives, Commercial Operations, RevOps, or Sales Operations.
3+ years leading high-performing teams.
Experience administering complex global sales incentive programs.
Strong understanding of sales compensation principles and incentive plan design.
Experience working with Sales Performance Management (SPM) platforms (such as Varicent, Xactly, Spiff, CaptivateIQ, or similar).
Strong analytical and financial acumen.
Proven ability to lead cross-functional initiatives.
Excellent executive communication and stakeholder management skills.
Preferred Qualifications
Experience supporting multinational sales organizations.
Experience leading compensation governance.
Knowledge of payroll operations.
Experience supporting audit and compliance activities.
Advanced Excel and data analytics skills.
Experience leading enterprise transformation initiatives.
Pay & Benefits
Compensation at Pearson is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, and specific location. As required by the California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York State, New York City, Vermont, Washington State, and Washington DC laws, the pay range for this position is between $150,000 - $170,000. This position is eligible to participate in an annual incentive program, and information on benefits offered is here.