Total Rewards Manager

Role Overview

Bright is looking for a Total Rewards Manager to take ownership of reward operations and people data reporting. This newly created role exists to ensure employees are rewarded fairly, benefits suit real-world needs, and reward data is dependable, consistent, and ready when decisions need to be made.

Bright is a PE-backed B2B SaaS company with around 400 employees across Ireland, the UK, and India. As the business grows, reward has become a strategic priority that needs dedicated focus. In this position, you will bring structure, discipline, and strategic thinking to compensation, benefits, reporting, and payroll coordination.

You will partner closely with the CPO, the Head of People Operations & Partnering, and the Finance team. You will also be the go-to person for employees and managers with questions about pay and benefits.

About Bright Software Group

Bright supports the digital practice of the future by helping accountants, payroll bureaus, and businesses across the UK and Ireland work more efficiently and achieve better outcomes. Its products and customer experience tools are designed to help customers run their businesses well and serve their own customers effectively. Bright believes that understanding is what separates simply working from truly winning.

First-Year Outcomes

• A compensation benchmarking approach that enables managers and the CPO to give clear and defensible answers about pay.
• A salary review cycle that is well prepared, clearly communicated, and delivered with confidence.
• Benefits that employees understand and genuinely value, with better awareness and usage over time.
• A reporting pack that gives the CPO, ELT, and RemCom reliable and consistent data whenever needed.
• EU Pay Transparency obligations delivered accurately and on schedule.
• A payroll partnership with Finance that runs smoothly, with no accuracy or compliance issues.

Key Responsibilities

You will lead the end-to-end reward function, covering compensation, benefits, analytics, governance, and payroll coordination. This includes building and maintaining reward structures, supporting leadership with analysis, and ensuring data quality across systems.

Compensation, Pay Review, and Compliance

• Manage the annual pay review process, including merit modelling, manager guidance, RemCom materials, and coordination with HR business partners across the organisation.
• Run compensation benchmarking for Ireland, the UK, and India, while keeping up to date on differences in pay practice and legislation across those regions.
• Support job evaluation and role levelling by providing market comparisons for new and changing roles.
• Create and maintain pay bands and salary structures, with support from the wider team.
• Prepare salary review scenarios and RemCom packs ahead of each committee meeting.
• Guide managers and HRBPs on pay decisions with practical, trusted advice.
• Maintain strong reward governance, including approval controls, audit evidence, and document version management.
• Lead EU Pay Transparency compliance activity with the CPO, Legal, and HRBPs.
• Run pay equity analysis across all jurisdictions and identify gaps that need action.

Benefits

• Own benefits administration across every jurisdiction, including renewals, supplier management, and keeping documentation accurate and easy to access.
• Lead the annual benefits review by comparing the company offering with the market and recommending improvements based on evidence.
• Increase employee awareness and usage of benefits across the business.

Reporting, Analytics, and Data Quality

• Own the compensation and benefits data setup, making sure HiBob always contains clean, accurate, audit-ready reward records.
• Build and maintain reporting for pay, benefits, headcount, and turnover for the CPO, ELT, RemCom, and investor reporting.
• Review and improve existing people reporting, close data gaps, increase consistency, and use AI tools to improve speed and insight quality.
• Deliver structured data extracts and analysis when required for leadership, audit, and investor needs.
• Support annual people budgeting and help manage ongoing reward and benefits costs.

Payroll Liaison

• Ensure compensation changes are correctly reflected, people data is complete, and HR-related payroll queries are resolved efficiently.
• Support payroll compliance checks, audits, and HMRC or Revenue queries that require HR data input.

Skills and Experience Required

The ideal candidate will bring hands-on reward expertise, strong analytical capability, and the confidence to work with senior stakeholders across People, Finance, and leadership teams.

Essential Experience

• Proven background in a dedicated reward, compensation, or total rewards position.
• Advanced Excel ability and strong analytical skills, including modelling data and presenting findings clearly to senior audiences.
• Experience preparing compensation analysis for leadership or governance forums.
• Practical experience with compensation benchmarking and salary survey participation.
• Experience managing and reviewing employee benefits programmes.
• Working knowledge of pay equity principles and employment law in Ireland and the UK.
• Experience with an HRIS platform, ideally HiBob, though transferable system experience is acceptable.
• Comfort using AI tools to work more quickly and improve output quality.
• Experience partnering with Finance on payroll interfaces and data governance.

Desirable Experience

• Background in a PE-backed, fast-growing SaaS or technology environment.
• Exposure to M&A, organisational change, or harmonising reward across multiple jurisdictions.

Personal Attributes

• High attention to detail and a strong commitment to data accuracy.
• Clear communication skills across all levels, from managers to board members.
• Ability to build trust through calm, reliable, and straightforward advice.
• Comfort working in ambiguity and helping shape new processes in a newly created role.
• Practical, confident use of AI as a productivity tool.
• A balanced view of people impact and business cost when making reward decisions.

Working at Bright

Bright offers a collaborative environment where people can be themselves. Even with more than 400 employees, the business still feels personal and team-oriented. Employees are supported to learn, grow, and make a real difference.

This is an exciting moment to join. Bright is growing quickly and investing heavily in AI, which creates meaningful opportunities both for the company and for the people who work there.

What You Can Expect

• Hybrid working with trust and flexibility in how you manage your time.
• A People team focused on building and improving, rather than simply maintaining what already exists.
• Direct visibility and close collaboration with the CPO.
• A company that actively embraces AI, including an AI Champions Network, a Literacy Framework, and leadership that expects practical use of AI tools.
• A competitive salary, benefits, and the chance to join a business with strong growth momentum.