Total Rewards Department Lead

Job Description

Job Description

Who we are:
Sequoia Financial Group is a growing Registered Investment Advisor (RIA), headquartered in Northeast Ohio, offering financial planning and wealth management services. At Sequoia, we exist with a singular purpose: to enrich lives. Our values define how we behave and guide us through the pursuit of our purpose to enrich lives. At Sequoia, our core values are:

• Integrity. We act in the best interests of others by providing an honest, consistent experience for our clients and team. 
• Passion . We pursue our full potential, seeking to continually enhance and evolve our ability to serve our clients and team.
• Teamwork.  We subordinate our egos to work together for the benefit of our clients. 

Our promise to team members is that you will grow with us. From experienced advisors to new college grads to transitioning principals, every team member will find Sequoia a place to refine their professional mission, move into new opportunities, go deeper, and lead further. We are built to help you build a career here as a long-term contributor in our work to enrich lives for generations.

POSITION SUMMARY

Sequoia's compensation and benefit programs have reached the point where dedicated, specialized expertise is needed. The Total Rewards Department Lead brings a background in compensation and benefit program design and administration and holds explicit, firm-wide responsibility for compensation- and benefits-related programs — work that today is carried by people alongside their primary roles.

This role gives Sequoia's total rewards function a single accountable owner for plan design, methodology, governance, and analytics, so that pay decisions across the firm are both correct and explainable, and so that partner functions — Finance, M&A, Compliance, the Advisor organization, and business leaders — have a defined counterpart for compensation questions rather than dispersed, ad hoc ownership.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Compensation Structure & Job Architecture

• Own salary range construction, refresh cadence, and off-cycle update triggers
• Own benchmarking methodology and survey source selection
• Own the job leveling framework, and job family and career path architecture
• Own job description governance and FLSA classification

Coordinates with:  Finance (budget and affordability constraint); Recruiting and HR Business Partners (leveling applied in hiring and internal job changes).

Compensation Plan Design

• Design compensation plans for business units, new role types, and M&A-driven needs
• Lead annual plan review and updates for role or structural change
• Maintain plan documentation of record
• Resolve exceptions within defined thresholds

Coordinates with:  Business leaders (define the need and behavior to be incented); Finance (cost input and scenario modeling).

Advisor & Revenue-Producer Compensation

• Set advisor compensation philosophy
• Design new advisor compensation plans and changes to existing plans
• Maintain the documented calculation methodology for every live plan as the document of record
• Own range review cadence and location adjustment policy

Coordinates with:  The Advisor organization (advisor relationships, education, and strategic direction of advisor economics). Calculation, quality assurance, and payment execution sit outside this role — placement to be determined among Finance, the Advisor organization, and/or a future data and analytics function.

Requires working knowledge of how advisor data is tracked in Salesforce (channel attribution, credit recording, adjustment capture).

Executive Compensation & Equity Governance

• Design equity-based compensation plans 
• Own the participant recommendation process — who is put forward, and on what basis
• Lead participant understanding and education
• Lead annual plan review and updates for role or structural change
• Maintain plan documentation of record
• Resolve exceptions within defined thresholds

Coordinates with:  Finance (valuation, cap table maintenance, plan administration, vesting mechanics, and reporting remain with Finance).

M&A Compensation Integration

• Maintain visibility into compensation and equity terms before they are finalized, and flag interactions with existing plans and firm-wide philosophy
• Define the compensation elements for incoming shareholders of an acquired firm
• Build and execute the post-close compensation and benefits harmonization plan
• Lead leveling and band placement of acquired roles

Coordinates with:  The M&A team (leads negotiation and owns deal terms); the integration team (owns post-close integration broadly).

Benefits Strategy & Medical Program Evolution

• Set multi-year benefits strategy alongside the annual renewal cycle
• Recommend medical plan design evolution and funding strategy as headcount scales
• Lead claims and utilization analysis with the broker, and multi-year cost trend forecasting into the budget process
• Set cost-sharing philosophy — how much of trend the firm absorbs, and the principle behind it
• Own point solution and high-cost coverage decisions
• Manage broker, consultant, and vendor relationships, and lead periodic market review
• Lead benefits harmonization and plan consolidation in acquisitions

Coordinates with:  Finance (owns the expense line, affordability constraint, and cost input; approval of funding decisions remains with Finance and ultimately the President).

Compensation Analytics & Pay Equity

• Run pay equity analysis as a standing practice rather than a periodic project
• Produce market position reporting by role family
• Analyze turnover and offer acceptance against actual compensation and position in range
• Supply per-role market cost inputs for the hiring plan

Coordinates with:  FP&A (owns financial modeling, budget aggregation, and reporting; this role supplies per-role market cost, FP&A models the aggregate).

Year-End Compensation Cycle

• Own the end-to-end cycle process and the published cycle calendar
• Design the recommendation process and configure supporting systems
• Conduct consistency and equity review of recommendations
• Produce compensation statement letters and the manager enablement toolkit
• Publish the annual compensation assumptions memo and executive reporting pack

Coordinates with:  Finance (recommends merit, COLA, and bonus funding; the President approves). Managers (make individual recommendations with one-up review).

CROSS-FUNCTIONAL RELATIONSHIPS

This role acts as the named, firm-wide counterpart for compensation and benefits questions across:

• Finance — market reference data, methodology of record, and coordinated timing on the year-end cycle and benefits budget process
• M&A / Corporate Development — early visibility into deal compensation terms, and a reusable post-close harmonization playbook
• The Advisor organization — plan design and methodology, while the Advisor organization retains relationships, education, and strategic direction
• Legal & Compliance — a single routing point for compensation design changes carrying Form ADV or conflict-of-interest disclosure implications
• Business leaders and managers — a single point of contact for plan design and range questions, and consistent, explainable pay decisions

QUALIFICATIONS

Required

• Progressive experience in compensation and benefits program design and administration, including at least several years in a leadership capacity
• Demonstrated experience building or maintaining job architecture, leveling frameworks, and salary structures
• Experience designing incentive or variable compensation plans, including plan documentation and governance
• Strong analytical skills, including pay equity analysis and market benchmarking methodology
• Ability to translate complex compensation mechanics into plain, explainable terms for employees and managers

Preferred

• Experience with equity-based compensation programs (e.g., phantom equity, equity grants, share purchase plans)
• Experience in wealth management, RIA, or another SEC-registered adviser environment, including familiarity with Form ADV disclosure implications
• Experience supporting compensation integration in M&A transactions
• Familiarity with Salesforce or comparable CRM/production-tracking systems as they relate to revenue-producer compensation
• CCP, CEBS, or other total rewards certification

Work Authorization & Sponsorship:
Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis without requiring employer sponsorship to commence or continue employment at any point in time. Unfortunately, we are not able to provide sponsorship.

EEO Statement:
At Sequoia, we value and respect differences in our workforce. We actively encourage everyone to apply. Sequoia is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, genetics, disability, age, veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.

Working Conditions:
Frequent minimal physical effort such as sitting, prolonged periods working on a computer, standing and walking is required for this role. Depending on location, occasional moving and lifting light equipment and/or furniture may be required. This role may require occasional travel, including travel to client sites, company offices, or industry events, as needed.

Employer Rights:
This job description does not list all of the job duties of the job. You may be asked by your supervisors or managers to perform other duties. You may be evaluated in part based upon your performance of the tasks listed in this job description. The employer has the right to revise this job description at any time. This job description is not a contract for employment and either you or the employer may terminate your employment at any time for any reason.