The Director, GIC Operations Excellence is a senior operational leader responsible for building and leading a new team within Salesforce's Global Incentive Compensation (GIC) organization, purpose-built to drive innovation across incentive compensation operations and processes. This role sits at the intersection of operational strategy, data analytics, AI, and process engineering — and is charged with fundamentally modernizing how GIC Operations works, in order to provide world-class incentive compensation support to a global team of 39k sellers.

This Director will identify, design, and execute improvements to the end-to-end incentive compensation operational lifecycle: eliminating manual work, automating repeatable processes, and building the infrastructure for a faster, more accurate, and more scalable GIC organization. The role requires deep cross-functional collaboration and the ability to move from strategic vision to on-the-ground execution.

Success in This Role Includes:

• Leading and growing a high-performing Ops Excellence team that becomes a force multiplier for the broader GIC organization.
• Delivering measurable reductions in manual effort, processing time, and error rates across GIC's core operational workflows.
• Establishing a culture of continuous improvement and innovation that is embedded into how GIC operates day-to-day.
• Becoming a trusted, influential partner to GIC leadership and cross-functional stakeholders (Sales, Sales Ops, Technology, HR, Finance) on operational strategy.
• Championing data and AI as tools that democratize insights and accelerate execution across the GIC team.

Responsibilities:
The Director, GIC Operations Excellence will own both the strategic vision and hands-on execution of operational transformation, including:

• Standing up and leading the new GIC Ops Excellence team, defining its charter, structure, and operating model.
• Diagnosing operational friction across GIC's workflows and building a prioritized roadmap of improvement initiatives.
• Partnering deeply across GIC functions (Comp Ops, Plan Ops, Analytics, Design/Policy) and with cross-functional teams to align on priorities, resources, and outcomes.
• Bringing a builder's mindset: turning ideas into pilots, pilots into programs, and programs into durable operating infrastructure.

Key Responsibilities:
Process Mapping & Optimization

• Lead end-to-end process mapping of GIC's core operational workflows, documenting current-state processes, identifying bottlenecks and redundancies, and designing future-state solutions.
• Partner with functional leaders across GIC to understand pain points, prioritize improvement opportunities, and drive structured problem-solving.

Automation & AI Innovation

• Identify and execute opportunities to automate manual, repetitive, or error-prone processes across the GIC operational lifecycle.
• Champion the use of AI tools — including Agentforce and generative AI — to improve how GIC teams access information, resolve cases, issue plans, and support sellers.
• Partner with GIC's technology and analytics teams to scope, test, and deploy automation and AI solutions.

Data-Driven Decision Making

• Leverage data to quantify operational inefficiencies, set baselines, and measure the impact of improvement initiatives.
• Build reporting frameworks that give GIC leadership real-time visibility into operational health, workload, and process performance.

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Change Management

• Drive alignment across GIC, Sales Operations, Finance, HR, and Technology on process improvement priorities and shared infrastructure investments.
• Lead change management for new tools, processes, and operating models — ensuring adoption is fast, smooth, and well-supported.
• Represent GIC Ops Excellence in senior leadership forums and cross-functional planning discussions.

Team Leadership & Development

• Build, recruit, mentor, and develop a new team of operations and transformation professionals.
• Establish a team culture grounded in curiosity, rigor, and execution — where bold ideas are welcomed and follow-through is expected.

Desired Skills & Experience:

• 10+ years of progressive experience in incentive compensation operations, strategy, and/or technology, with meaningful exposure to process transformation and/or technology-enabled change.
• 3+ years of people management or team leadership experience.
• Deep understanding of incentive compensation operations, systems, and/or sales compensation design.
• Demonstrated track record of successfully designing and implementing process improvements that reduced manual effort, improved accuracy, or scaled operational capacity.
• Strong command of process mapping methodologies and a structured approach to problem diagnosis and solution design.
• Experience working with data and analytics tools to drive insights and measure operational performance; familiarity with Tableau or similar BI tools a plus.
• Hands-on experience with or strong interest in AI and automation technologies and how they apply to sales compensation or finance operations.
• Exceptional project management skills with the ability to manage multiple workstreams across complex, cross-functional environments.
• Strong executive communication skills — both written and verbal — with the ability to influence senior stakeholders and translate complex operational concepts into clear narratives.
• Salesforce product experience (Spiff/ICM, Tableau, CRM) is a plus but not required.