Compensation & Equity Expert (Total Rewards)
Listing checked August 29, 2026 · pay as published by Mercor
Overview
Mercor's People team is building its compensation and equity foundation from scratch, and they want to bring in practitioners who have built these systems before. This is a Series C company at a $10B valuation with about 500 employees, plus a large global contractor network and a growing full-time workforce. The work is scoped to individual questions, with paid conversations on live problems. You set the depth: expertise in either compensation design or equity program management is enough, and the rate runs from $50 to $200 per hour depending on experience.
What You'll Do8
- 1Design salary bands, leveling frameworks, and job architecture from scratch for a company scaling quickly.
- 2Own the annual compensation cycle, including merit planning, promotion decisions, bonus programs, and equity refreshes.
- 3Benchmark compensation against a peer set and defend methodology to a skeptical executive team.
- 4Create incentive structures that are simple, credible, and actually change behavior.
- 5Design option and RSU programs, covering grant guidelines, pool planning, vesting structures, and refresh philosophy.
- 6Work through 409A valuations, plan governance, and grant administration at a venture-backed company.
- 7Build the modeling and communication that helps candidates and employees understand the real value of their equity.
- 8Optionally shape compensation philosophy, pay equity, pay transparency, and global contractor pay practices.
Requirements7
- 1Deep experience in either compensation architecture or equity program management (one is enough).
- 2Track record building salary bands, leveling frameworks, and job architecture from the ground up.
- 3Experience owning a full annual compensation cycle: merit planning, promotions, bonuses, equity refresh.
- 4Hands-on work with option and RSU grants, 409A valuations, and governance at a venture-backed company.
- 5Ability to benchmark against a peer set and defend recommendations to executives.
- 6Strong modeling and communication skills for translating equity value into simple terms.
- 7Bonus: global or contractor workforce compensation design, benefits, HRIS tooling, or IPO readiness.
Who Should Apply
The right candidate has built total rewards systems from zero and can point to specific frameworks they created, not just participated in. The role fits someone who enjoys scoped, short engagements and can quickly diagnose a live compensation or equity question. Generalist HR people who have only administered someone else's design will struggle here. Common reasons candidates get screened out are lacking depth in one of the two core areas, or having only operational experience without hands-on design and benchmarking responsibility.
Salary Insight
The rate is $50–$200 per hour, with the exact number set by depth of experience. Engagements run a few hours at a time, scoped to one question, and the paid conversation happens before any further commitment. The upper end of the range typically goes to senior total rewards leaders who have designed multi-country or IPO-ready structures.
Pay and demand for Talent Acquisition & Recruiting roles
AggregatedTypical pay
$70/hour
This role
$50–$200/hr
Most Talent Acquisition & Recruiting roles pay $57–$98 per hour. This role's pay sits above that range.
Based on 56 similar roles that publish pay · 2 publish only a top rate; those count at the rate they gave
Rates shown per hour. Yearly and monthly pay converted; one-time fees and non-USD pay are not included.
- Live similar roles
- 72
- Listed in last 30 days
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Hiring most right now: Mercor (30) · micro1 (19) · AfterQuery (5)
Most requested skills · share of roles
- human resources7%
- ai evaluation7%
- Project Management7%
- employee relations7%
Figures from Talent Acquisition & Recruiting roles live on NearSkill when this page loaded. A role can close before you apply, so check the listing itself.
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Compensation
$50–200/hr
Required Skills
Application Tip
Lead your application with a specific example of a compensation or equity structure you built from scratch, and include the business outcome (e.g., exec sign-off, retention shift, or a successful tender offer). Quantify the scale: how many employees, countries, and contractors your design covered. That directly matches what Mercor screens for.
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