Director, Total Rewards & HR AI Transformation

Location: San Jose, CA or Remote (with quarterly in-office connection as needed)

Ayar Labs is shattering AI data bottlenecks by moving data at the speed of light. As pioneers of co-packaged optics (CPO), we are using light instead of electricity to move data faster, further, and with a fraction of the energy needed to fuel the explosive growth of AI models.

Backed by industry giants like NVIDIA, AMD, Mediatek and Intel and manufactured in partnership with the world’s leading semiconductor ecosystem, Ayar Labs’ co-packaged optics solution is key to unleashing next-generation AI scale-up architectures.

In this role, you will drive firmware design from inception to customer deployment, ensuring seamless hardware validation and integration. This is a unique opportunity to leverage your expertise in embedded systems, multi-chip package environments, and high-speed SerDes to shape the future of optical interconnect.

About The Role

We are seeking a visionary, highly analytical, and innovative Director of Total Rewards & HR AI Transformation to lead our global compensation, benefits, and operational infrastructure. This is a uniquely high-impact role designed for a forward-thinking Total Rewards leader who views compensation and benefits not just as traditional corporate functions, but as strategic levers to drive business performance, optimize organizational velocity, and build an unmatched employee experience.

As a first mover in HR-focused AI automation, you will have a dual mandate: architecture and automation. You will design, scale, and govern world-class total rewards architectures across both private and public company life cycles. Simultaneously, you will champion our artificial intelligence roadmap across people operations, deploying intelligent systems to drive step-function increases in institutional efficiency and execution effectiveness.

The Cultural Profile

The ideal candidate possesses an uncompromised baseline of high integrity, exceptional analytical capabilities, and world-class communication skills. You are an expert at distilling hyper-complex financial, mathematical, and regulatory compensation datasets into crisp, compelling strategic narratives for our Board of Directors, executive leadership team, and global workforce.

Core Responsibilities

• Global Compensation Architecture & Board Governance
• Public & Private Life-Cycle Management: Design, implement, and optimize highly competitive broad-based and executive compensation frameworks (including equity strategy, salary structures, geographic differentials, and variable incentive plans) tailored to both high-growth private structures and public market compliance.
• Executive Compensation & Board Readiness: Partner intimately with the Chief People Officer and Compensation Partner to prepare materials for the Compensation Committee of the Board of Directors. Serve as an expert on executive peer groups, market benchmarking, run-rate and overhang metrics, and proxy statement positioning.
• Global Pay Scale Engineering: Architect cost-effective, scalable global compensation frameworks that align internal equity with local market realities, particularly across major tech corridors (e.g., San Jose / Silicon Valley) and expanding global engineering sites.
• Pay Equity & Compliance: Lead systemic audits regarding global pay equity, salary history bans, and transparency mandates, ensuring rock-solid regulatory alignment while maintaining competitive talent positioning.

• Health, Wellness & Employee Experience Benefits
• Vibrant Benefit Engineering: Design an innovative, modern health and wellness strategy focused on maximizing employee physical, mental, and financial well-being while rigorously managing corporate cost curves.
• Vendor Optimization & Cost Control: Leverage data-driven insights to negotiate, audit, and manage health insurance brokers, third-party administrators, 401(k) / retirement fiduciaries, and international perks to extract maximum fiscal value and service levels.
• Frictionless Employee Experience: Shift benefits from an administrative chore into a high-satisfaction talent retention asset through automated onboarding, intuitive self-service technologies, and transparent communication campaigns.

• AI Transformation, Automation & HR Operations
• First-Mover AI Implementation: Act as the primary architect for integrating generative AI, agentic workflows, and machine learning models into core People Operations infrastructure.
• Workflow Efficiency Engineering: Automate data collection, validation, and submission for complex statutory filings (e.g., local Department of Labor wage filings, equity allocations, and benefit enrollment patterns) to minimize manual overhead and eradicate operational latency.
• Predictive Analytics & Intelligence: Deploy AI-driven predictive modeling platforms to flag attrition vectors, model complex salary compression scenarios, project financial outcomes of equity pool refreshes, and provide automated, bespoke compensation planning advice to line managers.
  

Key Leadership Competencies

• Analytical Mastery: Advanced statistical capabilities; expert-level data modeling; ability to derive macroeconomic insights and strategic roadmaps from highly fragmented compensation and corporate data structures.
• Strategic Communication: Exceptional skill in narrative positioning. Ability to translate dense quantitative modeling into persuasive presentations for board members, and empathetic, accessible communication for employees.
• Uncompromising Integrity: Maintains absolute confidentiality and ethical execution regarding executive compensation, insider equity protocols, performance evaluations, and high-stakes data protection laws.
• Applied Innovation: A natural curiosity and hands-on technological agility to pilot and champion nascent software platforms, AI applications, and unconventional total reward frameworks.
  
  

Required Qualifications

• Years of Experience: 15 years of progressive HR leadership experience, with at least 8 years focused squarely within Total Rewards (Compensation & Benefits) design and execution.
• Corporate Life-Cycle Exposure: Proven track record of managing compensation through major inflection points, spanning venture-backed private organizations, pre-IPO transitions, and active public markets governed by rigorous SEC and SOX compliance rules.
• Global Footprint Management: Practical experience overseeing compensation frameworks across diverse geographies, including managing regional cost-to-company (CTC) structures, alternative visa constraints (e.g., prevailing wage minimums), and international benefit compliance.
• AI & Technology Fluency: Demonstrable, hands-on experience experimenting with or implementing AI automation, advanced enterprise HCM data architectures (e.g., Bamboo, Paycor, Radford/Aon databases), and business intelligence visualization suites.
• Educational Background: Bachelor’s degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, Economics, Mathematics, Finance, or a related quantitative field.
  
  

Annual salary range: $180,000 - $240,000

Note To Recruiters

Principals only. We are not accepting resumes from recruiters for this position. Remuneration for recruiting activities is only applicable subject to a signed and executed agreement between the parties. Please don’t send candidates to Ayar Labs, and do not contact our managers.

Ayar Labs is an Equal Opportunity Employer and is strongly committed to all policies which will afford equal opportunity employment to all qualified persons without regard to age, sex, national origin, race, color, ethnicity, creed, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. It is the policy of Ayar Labs to provide reasonable accommodation when requested by a qualified applicant or employee with a disability, unless such accommodation would cause an undue hardship. Veterans are more than welcome and encouraged to apply.