Director, Sales Compensation and Planning

About this role

About Ping Identity:

At Ping Identity, we believe in making digital experiences both secure and seamless for all users, without compromise. We call this digital freedom. And it's not just something we provide our customers. It's something that inspires our company. People don't come here to join a culture that's built on digital freedom. They come to cultivate it.

Our intelligent, cloud identity platform lets people shop, work, bank, and interact wherever and however they want. Without friction. Without fear.

While protecting digital identities is at the core of our technology, protecting individual identities is at the core of our culture. We champion every identity. One of our core values, Respect Individuality, reminds us to celebrate differences so you are empowered to bring your authentic self to work.

We're headquartered in Denver, Colorado and we have offices and employees around the globe. We serve the largest, most demanding enterprises worldwide, including more than half of the Fortune 100. At Ping Identity, we're changing the way people and businesses think about cybersecurity, digital experiences, and identity and access management.

The Role:
We are seeking a Director, Sales Compensation and Planning to lead one of the most strategic operating levers in our go-to-market organization: how we design, operationalize, communicate, and continuously improve sales compensation and quota planning.
This is an explicit people leadership role. The ideal candidate will coach, and develop talent while also serving as a hands-on strategic operator who can move fluidly between high-level plan design, detailed modeling, stakeholder alignment, and frontline problem-solving.
The primary components of this role are:

Sales Compensation Design & Operations: This role will own end-to-end sales compensation strategy and design, oversee annual and in-year planning, and ensure high-quality execution from modeling through rollout, field enablement, and ongoing governance. This leader will partner closely with Sales Leadership, Finance, Legal, HR, and business systems partners to build plans that are aligned to company goals, field friendly, analytically rigorous, and operationally executable. The role requires strong executive communication, the ability to translate analysis into insights and influence, and the judgment to balance seller motivation, cost discipline, and business strategy.

Sales Capacity Planning & Quota Allocation: Own company's sales capacity model encompassing headcount tracking, hiring and attrition forecasting, and productivity. Develop and maintain the Quota Allocation Model, including ramp quota structures across a multi-year tenure model. Own the target setting process cascading from model to sales organization wide targets.

Performance Management: Drive continuous performance management by analyzing rep attainment, payout outcomes, performance distributions, and trends, translating these insights into actionable recommendations to optimize plan design and seller productivity.

Detailed responsibilities:

Own sales compensation strategy, plan design, and annual refresh cycles across applicable sales roles, including plan mechanics, measures, accelerators, kickers, SPIFs, and policy guardrails.

Lead the planning process end to end, including project management, timelines, stakeholder intake, decision framing, draft iterations, approvals, and rollout readiness.

Build scenario models and perform pre-plan and in-year analysis to evaluate plan effectiveness, expected payout outcomes, attainment distributions, and cost implications.

Partner closely with Finance to support their commission cost modeling, actuals vs. plan reviews, variance analysis, and forward-looking commission expense scenarios.

Work in close partnership with the commissions team that manage Xactly administration and monthly payout processes to ensure plan design is executable, approvals are clean, and ongoing operations run smoothly.

Partner with Legal and cross-functional stakeholders to draft, review, and finalize compensation plan language, policy documentation, and exception frameworks.

Lead sales compensation rollout and field enablement through presentations, reference materials, leader preparation, and direct communication with sales teams.

Serve as a trusted advisor to sales leaders by building strong relationships, answering field questions, resolving ambiguity, and guiding exception handling with clear recommendations.

Design and manage SPIF programs, including structure design, cost estimation, approvals, operational setup, tracking, and communication to the field.

Translate analysis into influence by shaping recommendations, aligning stakeholders, and presenting clear tradeoffs to senior sales and finance leaders.

Own Sales Capacity planning and modelling, with attention to trends in the data, the underlying business itself and external market factors.

Perform routine capacity planning updates and reporting, as well as ad hoc reporting and scenario modelling.

Own quota allocation and target-setting, including analysis, recommendations, and incorporating sales leader input. Target setting should be grounded in capacity model outputs.

Drive continuous performance management by analyzing rep attainment, payout outcomes, performance distributions, and trends, translating these insights into actionable recommendations to optimize plan design and seller productivity.

Prepare executive and Board-level materials related to sales compensation, quota planning, and performance management.

Coach, and develop team member(s) while building a high-accountability culture grounded in rigor, responsiveness, and continuous improvement.

Leverage AI, automation, and modern analytical tooling to improve planning workflows, speed up analysis, reduce manual effort, and elevate decision quality.

Required Skills & Qualifications

7–10 years of progressive experience in sales compensation, sales…