Director, Commercial Excellence - Incentive Compensation

Director, Commercial Excellence – Incentive Compensation

The Director, Commercial Excellence – Incentive Compensation UCAN is accountable for the end‑to‑end design, governance, and execution of Baxter’s incentive compensation programs across assigned commercial businesses. This role leads a high‑performing team and serves as the enterprise expert on incentive compensation strategy, ensuring programs are aligned with business objectives and delivered with accuracy, compliance, scalability, and operational excellence. The role partners closely with Sales Leadership, Finance, HR, IT, and Analytics to translate commercial strategy into clear, executable incentive plans that drive performance, transparency, and accountability.

This role is critical to enabling Baxter’s commercial transformation—ensuring incentive programs evolve alongside changing business models, systems, and growth priorities while maintaining clarity, trust, and disciplined execution across the field.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Strategic Partnership & Advisory: Act as a trusted advisor to commercial leadership, Finance, and HR by translating business strategy into effective incentive plan designs that balance growth objectives, simplicity, risk management, and field motivation.
• End‑to‑End Incentive Compensation Ownership: Own the full incentive compensation lifecycle, including plan design support, scenario modeling, approval governance, system configuration, quota and territory alignment, payout calculation, validation, and payment execution.
• Team Leadership & Development: Lead, coach, and develop a global or regional incentive compensation team, building strong technical expertise, commercial understanding, accountability, and a culture of continuous improvement.
• Governance, Controls & Compliance: Establish and maintain robust governance frameworks, controls, documentation, and audit‑ready processes to ensure accuracy, SOX compliance, and adherence to internal policies and external regulatory requirements.
• Operational Excellence & Continuous Improvement: Drive standardization, simplification, and scalability of incentive compensation processes by leveraging automation, best practices, and data‑driven insights to improve cycle time, accuracy, transparency, and user experience.
• Systems, Data & Analytics Enablement: Partner with CRM, incentive compensation systems, and analytics teams to ensure strong system integration, data integrity, and reporting capabilities that provide timely, decision‑support insights.
• Change Management & Communication: Lead change management and communication strategies for new or evolving incentive plans, systems, and policies to ensure strong field understanding, adoption, and confidence.
• Stakeholder Management: Coordinate effectively with commercial leaders and cross‑functional partners including Finance, HR, Legal, IT, and external vendors to resolve issues, manage dependencies, and deliver against commercial timelines.
• Transformation: Lead the team through IT systems and process transformation initiatives to meet the needs of a changing organization and support future growth.

Qualifications

• Deep expertise in incentive compensation plan design, operations, and governance.
• Strong people leadership skills with the ability to build, inspire, and manage high‑performing teams.
• Advanced critical thinking and problem‑solving capabilities, with the ability to navigate ambiguity and complex trade‑offs.
• Strong financial and analytical acumen, including modeling and scenario analysis.
• Proven ability to influence senior stakeholders and operate effectively in a matrixed environment.
• Demonstrated experience driving process standardization, automation, and operational rigor.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to translate complex concepts into clear, actionable messages.
• High attention to detail with a strong control, risk, and compliance mindset.
• Proven success managing senior stakeholders.

Education and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Finance, Economics, Analytics, or a related field (or country equivalent) required.
• Master’s degree or MBA preferred.
• 10+ years of progressive experience in incentive compensation, sales operations, commercial excellence, or a related discipline.
• Advanced experience across the Incentive Compensation technology stack, including CRM and business intelligence tools.
• Prior people management experience required.
• Experience operating in complex, matrixed, and global commercial organizations strongly preferred.
• Prior experience within healthcare, life sciences, or similarly regulated industries preferred.

Compensation

The estimated base salary for this position is $184,000 - $253,000 annually. This range is intended to reflect an anticipated salary range for the position. Individual pay is based on location, skills and expertise, experience, and other relevant factors. The position may also be eligible for discretionary bonuses, commission, and/or long‑term incentive.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Baxter is an equal opportunity employer. Baxter evaluates qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, protected veteran status, disability/handicap status or any other legally protected characteristic.

Reasonable Accommodations

Baxter is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities globally. If, because of a medical condition or disability, you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application or interview process, please use the link on the application page and let us know the nature of your request along with your contact information.

Recruitment Fraud Notice

Baxter has discovered incidents of employment scams, where fraudulent parties pose as Baxter employees, recruiters, or other agents, and engage with online job seekers in an attempt to steal personal and/or financial information. To learn how you can protect yourself, review the recruitment fraud notice available on the company’s website.