Director, Total Rewards

THE OPPORTUNITY

Engine is scaling fast and raising its talent bar. We need a Total Rewards leader who treats rewards as a strategic lever for talent density: attracting, motivating, and retaining the top talent that compounds Engine's advantage. This person takes our compensation, benefits, and equity to the next level and keeps us ahead of the market as we grow.

Critically, this is a forward-looking role. AI is reshaping workforce composition - which roles we need, the skills that matter, and how supply, demand, and pricing for talent are shifting. Our Total Rewards leader anticipates those changes and evolves our comp philosophy, architecture, and programs ahead of the curve.

You'll report to the CPO, partner deeply with the ELT, and act as the trusted advisor on the most consequential comp and equity decisions Engine makes over the next three years.

WHAT YOU'LL OWN

Rewards for the AI-Native Workforce

• Anticipate how AI is changing the workforce - fewer transactional roles, more specialized and AI-fluent ones - and what that means for skills demand, market supply, and what talent is worth.
• Evolve toward skills-based rewards and job architecture - keeping pace with how work and value are shifting, not just historical benchmarks.
• Partner with functional leaders on the comp implications of every automation, role redesign, and new-role decision - so we're pricing talent correctly as the workforce evolves.

Compensation

• Use rewards to incentivize high performance - differentiated, pay-for-impact compensation that attracts and retains top performers and reinforces a high-caliber team.
• Keep Engine ahead of the market - continuously benchmark and adjust philosophy, bands, and structures as we scale and as roles evolve, rather than setting and forgetting.
• Design for geographic scale - build comp philosophy and infrastructure that supports multi-market hiring, geo-differentiation strategy, and international expansion as Engine grows.
• Lead pay transparency and equity - build the systems, communications, and analytics that make pay bands and philosophy legible to employees, defensible to regulators, and audited continuously for equity across gender, race, geography, and tenure.

Equity & Benefits

• Keep benefits modern and culturally aligned - a differentiated, competitive offering that scales with the company and signals we invest in our people.
• Make equity legible and valued - build the education, tools, and communications infrastructure that helps every employee understand what their equity is worth, when to make decisions about it, and how it compounds as Engine grows.

Scale & Partnership

• Build the data, modeling, and market intelligence to make Total Rewards a predictive and forward-looking function.
• Ensure programs are competitive, compliant across states, and scalable - and remove single-points-of-failure.
• Modernize the comp tech stack - evaluate, implement, and optimize the platforms that turn Total Rewards from a spreadsheet-heavy function into a real-time, decision-support capability for leaders.
• Enable managers as compensation partners - build the training, tools, and talking points that let every manager have a confident, honest conversation about pay, equity, and total rewards with their team.

WHAT YOU BRING

• 10+ years of Total Rewards experience with a track record of building strategy in fast-paced, high-growth companies - not just administering cycles.
• A strategic, business-first orientation - connects rewards to talent density, retention of top performers, and company performance.
• Forward-looking market sense - anticipates how AI and shifting skill demand reshape workforce composition and comp, and moves ahead of the curve.
• AI-native operator - uses AI tools in their own work (comp modeling, market analysis, comms drafting, equity education) and thinks about how to bring AI-native rigor to the Total Rewards function itself.
• Deep compensation expertise - performance philosophy aligned, with deep understanding of skills architecture, comp banding, variable structures, and executive incentive strategy.
• Deep equity expertise - has architected Series C to exit-stage scenarios, with deep understanding of founder ownership dynamics, options-to-RSU transitions, dilution modeling, and executive equity strategy.
• Strong analytics - advanced modeling and fluency with modern comp/HR systems and market data (e.g., Workday, Radford, Pave).
• Executive presence and influence - a builder who operates hands-on while setting and selling strategy, and a trusted advisor executive leaders turn to on their most complex people, comp, and equity questions.