Global Reward & Benefits Delivery Director

Arcadis is the world's leading company delivering sustainable design, engineering, and consultancy solutions for natural and built assets. We are more than 34,000 people, in over 30 countries, dedicated to improving quality of life. Everyone has an important role to play. With the power of many curious minds, together we can solve the world’s most complex challenges and deliver more impact together.

The Global Reward & Benefits Delivery Director will be responsible for developing, implementing, and managing the strategic framework, policies, procedures, and programs that promote a positive and inclusive employee experience and compliance with labour laws across the countries Arcadis operates in as well as reward cyclical activities. The role has country direct reports in the global reward teams across UKI, EU, Americas and Asia Pac who will work collaboratively to deliver appropriate frameworks and solutions to business needs.

Role responsibilities

• Create and deliver global frameworks and policy to manage reward elements and ways of working, ensuring a consistent, equitable, and market-competitive reward experience.
• Develop and maintain global reward frameworks, including salary structures, job architecture alignment, and incentive design.
• Ensure alignment of reward strategy with business priorities, workforce needs, and external market competitiveness.
• Drive consistency in reward principles while allowing appropriate local flexibility.
• Lead the global Annual Compensation Review process, including salary increases and promotion frameworks.
• Ensure robust governance, calibration, and consistency across regions and business areas.
• Provide insights and analytics to support decision-making and budget allocation.
• Design, implement, and manage Short-Term Incentive (STI) schemes aligned to business performance and individual contribution.
• Monitor effectiveness of incentive plans and drive continuous improvement.
• Oversee the development and maintenance of global salary structures and pay ranges.
• Ensure regular benchmarking against external markets to maintain competitiveness.
• Provide guidance on pay positioning and internal equity.
• Lead the organisation’s approach to the EU Pay Transparency Directive (EUPTD) and related regulations.
• Ensure reward practices are compliant with labour laws and emerging transparency requirements across all regions.
• Partner with legal, compliance, and DEIB teams to manage risk and drive equitable outcomes.
• Develop and deliver reward training for People teams, managers, and key stakeholders.
• Build understanding of reward principles, governance, and decision-making.
• Upskill teams to ensure consistent and effective application of reward practices globally.
• Partner with People CoEs, Finance, Legal, and business leaders to align reward strategies with organisational goals.
• Build strong relationships with regional People teams to ensure effective delivery and adoption of reward frameworks.
• Act as a visible steward of health and safety and ensure familiarity and compliance with Health and Safety regulations and guidelines including wellbeing and resilience.
• This role may require travel from time to time to meet with key stakeholders, and attend meetings and workshops.
• Depending on location it may require work outside normal business hours.

Qualifications & experience

The candidate should hold an academic degree (e.g., Human Resources, Business, Finance or related discipline) and demonstrate extensive experience in global reward within a complex, international matrix organisation. They will bring a strong track record of designing and leading reward strategies that drive performance, support business outcomes, and ensure compliance across multiple jurisdictions. They will be comfortable operating at both strategic and operational levels, with the ability to translate reward principles into scalable frameworks and processes across diverse markets. Further the candidate should have demonstrated experience in driving behavioural change pertaining to people issues.

Required experience and competencies

• Proven experience in leading global reward strategy and frameworks, including salary structures, job architecture, and incentive design.
• Deep expertise in Annual Compensation Review (ACR) cycles, including governance, calibration, budgeting, and delivery across multiple regions.
• Strong capability in designing and managing Short-Term Incentive (STI) and variable pay frameworks, ensuring clear alignment to performance and business outcomes.
• Extensive experience in market benchmarking, pay positioning, and internal equity management.
• Solid understanding of EU Pay Transparency Directive (EUPTD) and broader global pay transparency and regulatory requirements.
• Experience establishing and maintaining reward governance frameworks, policies, and controls within a global organisation.
• Strong analytical capability, with experience using reward data and insights to inform decision-making and support executive discussions.
• Demonstrated experience in building reward capability, including training People teams and stakeholders to apply reward principles consistently.
• Proven ability to operate effectively across multiple geographies (e.g., UK, Europe, Americas, Asia) with an understanding of local market dynamics and regulatory environments.
• Experience partnering with Finance, Legal, and senior business leaders to align reward strategy with financial and organisational objectives.