Principal Sales Compensation Systems Manager (IT Products)

Role overview

As Principal Sales Compensation Systems Manager (IT Products) at Palo Alto Networks, you will oversee Sales Commissions Systems and drive innovation while ensuring compensation accuracy and alignment with company goals. You’ll partner closely with Sales Operations and Compensation Operations, lead fiscal-year transitions, and continuously improve system capabilities.

Key missions / responsibilities

• Develop and implement advanced sales compensation systems that support complex, dynamic sales strategies.
• Define the vision and strategic direction for sales compensation systems in alignment with broader company objectives.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Sales Operations and Compensation Operations to ensure high-quality, accurate compensation outcomes.
• Lead large-scale projects and transitions in changing sales environments.
• Use a first-principles approach to design solutions and improve system logic.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree plus 12+ years of experience in sales compensation, sales operations, or related fields.
• Strong understanding of sales compensation plans, commission systems, and territory planning.
• Experience using AI-driven coding tools or low-code environments to explore data structures and automate sales-ops workflows.
• Ability to understand and map commission system logic and use generative tools to create testable models.
• Demonstrated ability to manage large-scale transitions and projects.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.

Nice-to-haves

• MBA or Master’s in a technical or business-related field.
• Experience with compensation applications such as SAP Commissions, Anaplan, and Salesforce (SFDC).
• Experience using LLMs / agentic workflows for product discovery, data cleaning, or complex formula generation.
• Experience with Agile methods (Scrum/Kanban).
• Prior Principal or Director-level experience with ownership of a significant product area.