Lead, Compensation Design

Job description

We are proud to be the vacation-industry leader with global brands — including Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises and Silversea Cruises — the most innovative fleet and private destinations, and the best people. Together, we are dedicated to turning the vacation of a lifetime into a lifetime of vacations for our guests. The Royal Caribbean Group’s Shoreside Compensation Team has an exciting career opportunity for a full time Lead, Compensation Design reporting to the Senior Manager, Compensation Design.

This position is onsite and based in Miami, Florida. This position is also not eligible for work authorization sponsorship.

Position Summary

The Lead, Compensation Design is responsible for developing compensation programs, frameworks, analytics, and recommendations that support business outcomes, market competitiveness, internal equity, and effective governance across Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises, Silversea Cruises, and our Private Destination locations. This role will independently drive the structuring, modeling, and implementation of assigned work across broad-based compensation, job architecture, market pricing, pay equity, and compensation analytics.

The Lead will translate business and Total Rewards priorities into structured recommendations, financial models, program designs, and implementation-ready solutions while serving as a Compensation Design partner to Brand leaders and cross-functional stakeholders. The ideal candidate brings strong analytical capability, business judgment, urgency, and ownership. Success requires the ability to take ambiguous business needs, quickly structure the work, develop a clear point of view, and deliver high-quality outputs with limited direction.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

Compensation Strategy & Structure: Develop, implement, and maintain compensation frameworks, salary structures, market pricing approaches, and incentive programs that align with business priorities and talent strategy.

Broad-Based Compensation Expertise

Structure base pay practices, pay ranges, annual incentive opportunities, and variable compensation programs with clear governance, modeling, and implementation discipline.

Job Architecture & Job Evaluation

Perform and support job evaluations, leveling assessments, job architecture activities, and related governance to promote consistency and appropriate role alignment across supported businesses.

Analytics & Financial Modeling

Build, review, and analyze financial models, forecasts, and scenario analyses related to compensation cycles, program design, budget allocation, and business cases.

Insights & Recommendations

Translate complex data into clear insights, tradeoffs, implications, and recommendations for leadership decision-making.

Workflow Innovation & AI Enablement

Apply AI, emerging technologies, and process improvement thinking to improve compensation workflows, increase scalability, reduce manual effort, and strengthen insight generation.

Governance, Compliance & Pay Equity

Support compensation governance, pay transparency, pay fairness, regulatory reporting, global pay equity analysis, remediation planning, and audit readiness.

Cross-Functional Partnership

Partner with Brand leaders, HR, Finance, Legal, Payroll, Operations, Talent Acquisition, Talent Management, and other stakeholders to develop compensation recommendations and support program design, implementation, governance, and key business initiatives.

Workstream Leadership & Execution

Independently lead assigned compensation workstreams from problem definition through analysis, recommendation, stakeholder alignment, implementation, and closure with strong ownership, urgency, and quality.

Knowledge and Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in Human Resources, Business, Finance, Economics, Statistics, or a related field. 5+ years of progressive experience in corporate compensation, Total Rewards consulting, or a related analytical/advisory field directly tied to rewards, workforce cost, compensation design, or compensation governance. Strong analytical capability, including advanced Excel skills, financial modeling, market data analysis, scenario planning, and interpretation of complex datasets.

Demonstrated ability to independently build, review, audit, and validate complex data and financial models. Experience with broad-based compensation, market pricing, job evaluation, job architecture, variable compensation, pay equity, or compensation governance. Proven ability to convert ambiguous business issues into structured workplans, clear analysis, actionable recommendations, and implementation-ready solutions. Strong business acumen and judgment; able to connect compensation design to talent strategy, financial objectives, stakeholder needs, governance, and operational realities.

Strong consulting acumen and ability to influence without authority across HR, Finance, Legal, Payroll, Operations, Brand leaders, and the business; able to translate complex compensation issues into clear, business-relevant recommendations. Experience in large, matrixed, multi-brand, multinational, or highly complex organizations preferred. Experience with enterprise HRIS platforms, such as SuccessFactors or Workday; compensation systems; survey platforms; and analytics/visualization tools, such as Tableau or Power BI, preferred.

Applied curiosity and fluency with AI, emerging technologies, and process improvement approaches to improve scalability, reduce manual work, and strengthen compensation insights. Customer-focused and results-oriented with strong ownership and a bias toward action; comfortable working independently in a demanding, deadline-driven environment.

Agency and Third-Party Submissions

Please note this is a direct search by the Company, and applications through agencies and other third parties will not be accepted, nor will fees be paid for unsolicited resumes. Any unsolicited resumes will be considered the Company's property. We know there's a lot to consider. As you go through the application process, our recruiters will be glad to provide guidance, and more relevant details to answer any additional questions.

Thank you again for your interest in Royal Caribbean Group. We'll hope to see you onboard soon! It is the policy of the Company to ensure equal employment and promotion opportunity to qualified candidates without discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, sexuality, gender identity or expression, marital status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Royal Caribbean Group and each of its subsidiaries prohibit and will not tolerate discrimination or harassment. #LI-MP1