Founding Sales Compensation Manager

Your main goal will be to become the founding owner of Sales Compensation at n8n, building from scratch how we pay and motivate every revenue team across SMB, Mid-Market, Enterprise, CS, SE, SDR, and Partnerships, spanning EMEA and AMER. You'll have the mandate to make it AI-first from day one, partnering with our internal AI team to build the agents that run it at scale.

Compensation Plan Design & Governance

• Design, cost, and maintain variable compensation plans for quota-carrying reps and overlay roles (BDR, Partners, SE, CS), aligned with GTM strategy and financial targets.
• Model plan costs and payout scenarios ahead of annual and mid-year changes, partnering with Finance on affordability and ROI.
• Own plan documentation, rep-facing comp letters, and FAQs.

Quota & Crediting Operations

• Implement quotas, targets, and crediting rules correctly across the commissions platform and Salesforce .
• Own crediting logic for expansions, amendments, multi-year deals, proration, and FX.
• Partner with RevOps and Deal Desk to keep crediting aligned with how deals are structured.

Commission Calculation & Payments

• Run monthly and quarterly commission calculations, reconciliation, and dispute resolution.
• Own the payroll handoff process, ensuring accurate and on-time payouts.
• Maintain audit readiness and strong internal controls across the full compensation cycle.

Reporting & Analytics

• Build and maintain reliable reporting on attainment, payouts, and plan effectiveness for Sales, Finance, and RevOps leadership.
• Surface insights on plan performance and recommend adjustments to keep incentives driving the right behaviors.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner with Sales leadership, RevOps, Finance/FP&A, Payroll, People, and Legal on compensation governance.
• Serve as the go-to expert on comp mechanics, explaining plan design and payouts to reps and executives alike.
• Support internal-controls work, responding to audit requests related to compensation.

REQUIREMENTS

Must-haves

• Comp/RevOps experience: You bring 4-8+ years in Sales Compensation, Incentive Compensation, RevOps, Sales Ops, or Finance within a high-growth B2B SaaS environment.
• Plan design expertise: You've designed and operated variable compensation plans, including quota-carrying and overlay roles, accelerators, and SPIFFs.
• SaaS commercial fluency: You're fluent in SaaS commercial concepts like bookings/ARR, expansions and amendments, multi-year deals, proration, and FX.
• Commissions operations: You have hands-on experience with reconciliation, dispute handling, approvals, payroll handoff, and audit readiness under tight monthly close timelines.
• Advanced spreadsheet skills: You're advanced in Excel or Google Sheets - pivot tables, complex formulas, data cleaning, and modeling.
• ️ Systems fluency: You're comfortable in Salesforce (or a similar CRM) and a commissions platform such as Qobra, CaptivateIQ, Xactly, Varicent, or Everstage .
• ️ Stakeholder communication: You explain comp mechanics clearly to reps and executives alike, building trust through every conversation.
• Integrity & discretion: You handle sensitive compensation data with high integrity and discretion.

Nice-to-haves

• SOX & controls experience: You've worked with SOX/internal controls and commissions accounting or accruals.
• BI/reporting tools: You have experience with BI or reporting tooling.
• Automation skills: You're comfortable with SQL, dbt, or scripting to automate parts of the comp workflow.

At n8n, you'll be the first dedicated owner of a mission-critical revenue function - building the systems, processes, and controls behind sales compensation largely from the ground up. You'll work with high visibility across Sales, Finance, and RevOps leadership, with real autonomy to shape how the comp function evolves as we scale. You'll join a supportive, remote-first team that values autonomy, experimentation, and continuous learning, inside one of Europe's fastest-growing startups.