Your work days are brighter here.
We’re obsessed with making hard work pay off, for our people, our customers, and the world around us. As a Fortune 500 company and a leading AI platform for managing people, money, and agents, we’re shaping the future of work so teams can reach their potential and focus on what matters most. The minute you join, you’ll feel it. Not just in the products we build, but in how we show up for each other. Our culture is rooted in integrity, empathy, and shared enthusiasm. We’re in this together, tackling big challenges with bold ideas and genuine care. We look for curious minds and courageous collaborators who bring sun-drenched optimism and drive. Whether you're building smarter solutions, supporting customers, or creating a space where everyone belongs, you’ll do meaningful work with Workmates who’ve got your back. In return, we’ll give you the trust to take risks, the tools to grow, the skills to develop and the support of a company invested in you for the long haul. So, if you want to inspire a brighter work day for everyone, including yourself, you’ve found a match in Workday, and we hope to be a match for you too.
About the Team
Workmates pride themselves on winning while having fun! That means supporting each other while driving accountability for amazing results and performance. This team is no different. Everything we do inspires a brighter work day for all.About the Role
At Workday, incentives are one of the most important mechanisms we have to translate company strategy into field execution. We are looking for a Vice President, Global Incentives Strategy & Operations to lead the strategy, design support, governance, and operational delivery of incentive programs across our global revenue organization.
This leader will own the incentive operating model for a broad and complex set of populations, including Sales Leadership, quota-carrying sellers, sales support teams such as Presales, Value Management, and Customer Success, as well as our partner organization, including GPO. The role sits at the center of company strategy, field behavior, financial rigor, and operational execution.
The person in this role will help shape how Workday motivates growth, balances company priorities, supports different go-to-market motions, and executes incentive programs at global scale. This is a senior leadership role requiring strong business judgment, deep compensation expertise, operational precision, and the ability to influence across Revenue, Finance, People & Purpose, Accounting, Legal, and systems teams.
As the leader of the global incentives strategy and operations function, you will serve as the primary architect and executor of a comprehensive compensation framework designed to align the company’s go-to-market priorities with the performance of all revenue-facing roles, including Sales, Customer Success, and the Global Partner Organization. By partnering with executive leadership to define compensation philosophy and plan architecture, you will oversee the entire annual lifecycle—from complex financial modeling and goal sheet automation to global rollout and change management—ensuring that incentive structures are scalable, effective, and geographically nuanced. Your mandate includes driving operational excellence through systems integration and rigorous reporting while maintaining a robust governance model for policy interpretation and exceptions. Ultimately, you will foster field trust through transparent communication and modern support tools, all while leading a high-performing team dedicated to transforming incentives into a strategic lever that drives predictable, high-quality revenue growth.
Develop and support incentive strategies across a wide range of field roles with different objectives, sales motions, and success measures
Ensure plans are aligned to Workday’s business priorities, financially sound, behaviorally effective, and operationally scalable
Partner with senior leaders to calibrate measures, mix, weightings, accelerators, gates, crediting frameworks, and role-specific mechanics
Balance consistency and fairness with the realities of different field roles, from direct sellers to overlays, leaders, support teams, and partner motions
Sales Leadership Plan Strategy:
Own the incentive strategy and plan support for Sales Leadership roles
Ensure leadership measures reinforce enterprise priorities including revenue outcomes, renewal performance, pipeline quality, product focus, and organizational execution
Help senior leaders understand tradeoffs and implications of leadership plan design decisions
Seller Plan Strategy and Operations:
Oversee incentive support for quota-carrying sales roles across segments, territories, and go-to-market motions
Ensure plans are understandable, executable, and aligned to the desired field behaviors
Support annual and in-year plan changes with appropriate modeling, controls, communications, and readiness
Sales Support, Customer Success, and Non-Quota Field Roles:
Lead the incentive strategy and operational framework for Presales, Value Management, Customer Success, and other supporting field teams where variable compensation is used
Build role-appropriate plan approaches that reflect business impact, partnership with sales, customer outcomes, and operational realities
Ensure support roles are treated with rigor and consistency rather than as exceptions to the broader compensation framework
Partner Organization Incentive Strategy:
Oversee incentive frameworks and operational support for partner-facing roles and organizations including GPO
Help define clear principles for crediting, role clarity, channel alignment, and compensation treatment in partner-influenced and partner-led motions
Partner with leadership to manage complexity where direct and indirect motions intersect
Global Operations and Annual Readiness:
Lead all activities required for a successful annual launch, including planning, design support, testing, documentation, goal sheet generation, and deployment
Reduce operational risk and improve execution quality across one of the most visible annual processes in the revenue organization
Establish disciplined operating plans, milestones, controls, and contingency measures
Governance, Policy, and Exception Management:
Build and run strong governance processes for plan interpretation, compensation policy, exception requests, escalations, and executive decision-making
Partner with Finance, Accounting, People & Purpose, and Legal to ensure sound policy application, compliance, and auditability
Drive consistency and discipline in how compensation issues are reviewed and resolved
Communications, Enablement, and Field Trust:
Improve the way incentive plans are communicated to leaders, sellers, and support teams
Oversee the development of field-facing materials such as plan guides, FAQs, calculators, enablement sessions, and office hours
Raise trust in the incentives function through greater clarity, responsiveness, and consistency
Systems, Controls, and Transformation:
Strengthen the systems and processes that support incentive execution, including integration with platforms such as Xactly, Salesforce, Clari, and related reporting tools
Improve reporting on plan performance, payout patterns, field behavior, exceptions, and operational health
Simplify workflows, reduce manual interventions, and increase data quality and transparency
About You
15+ years of experience in sales compensation, incentive strategy, revenue operations, finance, or a related field, with substantial senior leadership experience
Proven success leading complex global incentive programs across multiple role types, including sales, sales leadership, overlays, support teams, customer-facing post-sales roles, and partner organizations
Deep expertise in compensation design, goal setting, crediting, governance, exception management, and operational execution
Strong executive presence and the ability to influence senior stakeholders across Revenue, Finance, HR, Accounting, and Legal
Exceptional analytical and strategic problem-solving skills, with the ability to connect incentive design to business performance and field behavior
Strong operating discipline and experience leading large-scale annual cycles with high accuracy and tight timelines
Experience building scalable processes, strong controls, and high-performing teams in a complex enterprise SaaS environment
Excellent communication skills, especially the ability to explain complex compensation topics in a clear and credible way to executives and field teams
Ability to handle ambiguity, complexity, and competing stakeholder priorities without losing rigor
Direct experience across both direct and indirect go-to-market models
Experience with compensation for partner organizations and channel-related crediting complexity
Familiarity with systems such as Xactly, Salesforce, Clari, and enterprise reporting platforms
Experience leading compensation governance boards, escalation forums, and executive review processes
Background spanning both strategy and operations, rather than narrow plan administration
Workday Pay Transparency Statement
The annualized base salary ranges for the primary location and any additional locations are listed below. Workday pay ranges vary based on work location. As a part of the total compensation package, this role may be eligible for the Workday Bonus Plan or a role-specific commission/bonus, as well as annual refresh stock grants. Recruiters can share more detail during the hiring process. Each candidate’s compensation offer will be based on multiple factors including, but not limited to, geography, experience, skills, job duties, and business need, among other things. For more information regarding Workday’s comprehensive benefits, please click here.
Primary Location: USA.CA.Pleasanton
Our Approach to Flexible Work
With Flex Work, we’re combining the best of both worlds: in-person time and remote. Our approach enables our teams to deepen connections, maintain a strong community, and do their best work. We know that flexibility can take shape in many ways, so rather than a number of required days in-office each week, we simply spend at least half (50%) of our time each quarter in the office or in the field with our customers, prospects, and partners (depending on role). This means you'll have the freedom to create a flexible schedule that caters to your business, team, and personal needs, while being intentional to make the most of time spent together. Those in our remote "home office" roles also have the opportunity to come together in our offices for important moments that matter.
Pursuant to applicable Fair Chance law, Workday will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
Workday is an Equal Opportunity Employer including individuals with disabilities and protected veterans.
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