Director of Sales Incentives

About the role

You are Nscale's Behavioral Architect, responsible for designing incentive plans that motivate our sales representatives to hit hyper-growth targets while keeping corporate margins safe and aligning perfectly with our hardware deployment realities. Selling physical infrastructure means we cannot compensate reps for selling compute that doesn't exist yet, but we must still incentivize aggressive pipeline generation to feed the production engine. You will dive into this complex tension, building the foundational compensation models from a blank page and ensuring that every plan tells a coherent story about how we win in the market. You will act as the crucial, objective bridge between the high-energy sales floor and the strict governance of the Corporate Finance and HR teams. Your work will translate strategic business objectives into tangible, understandable rules that drive the right behaviors at the right time. You will own the narrative of how value is created and shared across the organization, ensuring that the plan reinforces our commitment to execution and accountability. This role requires a rare blend of analytical rigor and empathy, allowing you to craft structures that are both motivating and sustainable. You will be the guardian of fairness, ensuring that the rules of the game are clear, consistent, and trusted by every member of the sales organization.

Key facts

What you'll do

Design the complete blueprint for all GTM incentive plans, covering Account Executives, Deal Strategists, and Sales Leaders, ensuring they drive the correct behavioral outcomes and align with the long-term strategy of Nscale.

Create sophisticated payout structures that tie commissions not only to closed-won contracts but also to actual hardware deployment schedules, utilization rates, and realized margins, ensuring compensation reflects real business value.

Translate the tension between aggressive sales demands and strict financial governance into practical plan rules, acting as the objective negotiator and translator between Sales leadership and Finance/HR stakeholders.

Partner with RevOps to meticulously model territories and set highly ambitious yet achievable quotas based on rigorous data analysis, market insights, and historical performance trends.

Manage the ongoing administration of compensation plans, handling exception requests with high emotional intelligence and ensuring all plans remain legally compliant across multiple global jurisdictions.

Develop scenario models and stress tests using advanced financial modeling to pressure-test compensation structures before they are implemented, evaluating risk, reward, and impact on profitability.

Define the metrics and KPIs that will be used to measure the health and effectiveness of the incentive plans, providing regular insights and recommendations for continuous improvement.

Act as a plan philosopher and practitioner, presenting high-level compensation philosophy to the Board while also being prepared to manually calculate a complex commission dispute for a frontline representative with precision and empathy.

Ensure seamless integration of plan design into payroll mechanics and commission software tools, validating data flows and system configurations to prevent errors and ensure timely, accurate payouts.

Champion a player-coach mentality by educating sales leaders and reps on plan mechanics, enabling them to understand how to win within the structure and fostering a culture of transparency and trust.

Collaborate closely with cross-functional partners to gather input, challenge assumptions, and refine plans to reflect the evolving realities of the business and the market.

Own the documentation and communication of plan changes, ensuring that all stakeholders are informed and aligned with the rationale behind every update and modification.

Champion data integrity and process discipline, establishing robust controls and checks that safeguard against inaccuracies and ensure the integrity of the compensation process.

Serve as a subject matter expert and thought leader within the compensation domain, bringing best practices and innovative approaches from other industries to solve Nscale's unique challenges.

Act as a strategic advisor to the executive team, providing insights and recommendations that balance growth objectives with financial discipline and operational feasibility.

Requirements

8+ years of experience in compensation architecture, RevOps, or sales incentive design, preferably within a hardware, cloud, or complex B2B enterprise environment.

Extremely high emotional intelligence and a thick skin. You know how to manage the natural, intense tension between aggressive sales demands and corporate governance without bruising egos or compromising outcomes.

Advanced financial modeling skills. You can build highly complex, multi-variable spreadsheet models to pressure-test compensation scenarios before they are rolled out, ensuring clarity and confidence in the proposed structures.

A player-coach mentality. You are comfortable presenting a high-level compensation philosophy to the Board and are equally comfortable manually calculating a complex commission dispute for a rep on the front line.

Deep understanding of commission software tools and the ability to integrate plan design into payroll mechanics seamlessly, ensuring that the rules of the plan are executed flawlessly in the system.

Strong understanding of legal and regulatory requirements related to sales compensation across multiple jurisdictions, with a commitment to ensuring compliance in all plan designs.

A data-driven mindset with the ability to interpret complex datasets, derive actionable insights, and communicate findings clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.