Senior Lead, Compensation & Benefits (All Genders)

Senior Lead, Compensation & Benefits (All Genders)

As Senior Lead, Compensation & Benefits, you will play a critical role in shaping zooplus’ global reward strategy. You’ll design forward-looking approaches to compensation and benefits that attract, motivate, and retain top talent across Europe. This is a senior specialist role with high visibility, where you’ll partner closely with business leaders, the executive team, and People & Culture colleagues to ensure our reward framework drives both employee engagement and business growth. You’ll not only lead on core reward processes but also act as a thought partner to the business, bringing external insights, shaping new initiatives, and ensuring our practices remain competitive, fair, and transparent.

Responsibilities

• Reward Strategy & Design: Lead the development and ongoing evolution of zooplus’ compensation philosophy and global reward framework, balancing market competitiveness, internal equity, and business needs.
• Executive & Senior Stakeholder Engagement: Advise senior leaders and partner with the executive team on reward decisions, pay structures, and incentive design.
• Annual Reward Cycle Leadership: Drive all reward-related processes linked to performance and talent cycles, ensuring seamless delivery and strong business alignment.
• Incentives & Recognition: Shape and oversee bonus, long term incentive, and recognition programs, ensuring they are motivating, sustainable, and aligned with company priorities.
• Benefits Strategy: Partner with local teams to refine and evolve benefits offerings across Europe, ensuring relevance, consistency, and employee impact.
• Pay Transparency & Governance: Lead initiatives that promote fairness and transparency while staying ahead of evolving European regulatory requirements.
• Job Architecture & Career Frameworks: Oversee and enhance our job architecture, ensuring clear career pathways and alignment with pay structures.
• Data, Insights & Market Intelligence: Provide senior leadership with robust analysis, benchmarks, and insights to inform decision-making and future strategy.
• Change Leadership: Act as a champion for simplification and modernization in reward processes, bringing a continuous improvement mindset.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of progressive experience in Compensation & Benefits, with exposure to international and complex business environments.
• Proven track record of designing and implementing compensation strategies and incentive programs.
• Strong knowledge of European (particularly German) compensation practices and regulatory trends.
• Skilled at engaging and influencing senior leaders, with confidence presenting to executive-level stakeholders.
• Experience leading complex reward cycles, driving process improvements, and embedding change.
• Strong analytical skills, with the ability to translate data into insights and strategic recommendations.
• Experience with compensation systems (Workday preferred) and familiarity with both monetary and non-monetary reward approaches.

Additional Information

With more than 1,000 passionate professionals located across 6 European offices, we believe our success comes from working together and leveraging our international strengths. Expect a hybrid work setup: 60% in-office, 40% remote , collaborating with colleagues across locations.

• Our benefits: 20% discount in our zooplus shop
• Internal and external training
• Team events
• 28 vacation days and days off on 24th and 31st of December
• Corporate rates at a local gym chain (Body & Soul)
• Company mobile phone for work and personal use

Job Details

• Seniority level: Mid-Senior level
• Employment type: Full-time
• Job function: Finance
• Industries: Retail

zooplus is committed to equal opportunity. We value and embrace diversity and inclusion of all Team Members.

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