Total Rewards Manager

ABOUT THE TEAM
Bestow is building a dedicated Total Rewards function for the first time. Today, compensation, equity, and benefits work is split across People, Finance, and Legal with no single owner. This role exists to own the full total rewards portfolio (pay, equity, and benefits) end to end, bring rigor to how Bestow benchmarks and communicates rewards, and partner closely with Finance, Legal, and the board's compensation committee as Bestow scales.

This is a hands-on, builder role at a company still standing up its Total Rewards infrastructure. Expect to both set strategy and do the execution work (Pave configuration, equity modeling, benefits renewals) in year one.

WHAT YOU'LL DO
As the Total Rewards Manager, you will:

Own Pave end to end: benchmark configuration (market cut, percentile, geographic tiers), comp cycle setup, and data integrity between BambooHR (HRIS) and Pave.

Manage the Total Rewards Assessment & Roadmap: audit current comp and benefits philosophy, market positioning, and tooling.

Maintain and refresh salary bands: anchor to a clear, consistently-applied benchmarking philosophy; review and resolve flagged band outliers by job family.

Partner on job leveling: bring consistency to a leveling framework and support a more standardized leveling process.

Own the bi-annual merit, promotion & bonus cycle: design and execution in Pave, partnering with Finance on budget and approval workflows.

Equity Administration: partner closely with Legal and Finance teams to maintain an up to date equity database

Manage overall equity program: ongoing market benchmarking of equity practices, equity analytics, and end-to-end execution of refresh and promotion equity cycles.

Assess geographic pay ranges: make the case for them as Bestow's workforce becomes more distributed.

Own benefits strategy: annual renewal strategy, plan design changes, and new offering evaluation (e.g., lifestyle spending accounts, wellness perks, voluntary benefits), in partnership with the broker.

WHO YOU ARE
Experienced: 5-8+ years in compensation, total rewards, or a closely related HR discipline, including direct experience with equity administration at a venture-backed or newly-public company.

Ops-rooted: Ideally began in or spent time in people operations.

Platform-fluent: Hands-on experience with a comp benchmarking/planning platform (Pave, Radford, or similar) and running end-to-end merit/comp cycles.

Equity-fluent: Direct experience managing equity programs: grant sizing methodology, equity analysis, refresh/retention programs, Carta or similar cap table tools, and board/compensation committee facing materials.

Benefits-savvy: Benefits strategy experience: renewals, broker management, and plan design decisions.

Analytically sharp: Advanced Excel/analysis skills; comfort building and defending a compensation model from first principles rather than following a template.

A strong partner: Excellent cross-functional partnership skills; this role works constantly with Finance and Legal, and needs to translate technical comp/equity concepts for managers and employees.

Bonus points: Experience standing up a Total Rewards function from scratch at a similarly-sized company (~100-250 employees); familiarity with job architecture/leveling framework design; insurance, fintech, or other regulated-industry experience.