Senior Rewards Specialist

The Senior Specialist, Total Rewards supports the design, implementation, and continuous improvement of MBZUAI’s Total Rewards and workforce planning frameworks, ensuring competitive, equitable, and financially sustainable people practices aligned with the University’s strategic priorities.

The role provides specialist expertise across compensation, benefits, job evaluation, salary benchmarking, pay structures, reward analytics, and annual reward processes, while supporting workforce planning, organizational design, and workforce analytics. Through market intelligence, scenario modelling, and people analytics, the role provides data-driven recommendations on reward competitiveness, internal equity, workforce requirements, and people costs.

Working closely with Human Resources, Finance, and University stakeholders, the position supports integrated workforce and reward decisions that enable MBZUAI to attract, retain, and optimize a high-performing and globally competitive workforce.

• Support the design, review, and administration of MBZUAI’s Total Rewards framework, including salary structures, allowances, incentives, benefits, and other reward programs.
• Conduct compensation and benefits benchmarking and market analysis to assess competitiveness across relevant higher education, research, technology, and UAE labor markets.
• Support the annual salary review and bonus cycles, including eligibility validation, modelling, calibration, analysis, and implementation.
• Provide compensation recommendations for new hires, promotions, transfers, contract renewals, and other employee movements, considering market positioning, internal equity, approved salary structures, and applicable policies.
• Monitor the utilization, cost, competitiveness, and effectiveness of employee benefits and provide analysis to support program reviews and renewal decisions.
• Monitor market trends and regulatory developments and provide evidence-based recommendations to maintain competitive, equitable, and financially sustainable reward practices.

• Conduct job evaluations and provide recommendations on appropriate job grades using the University’s approved job evaluation methodology.
• Design and maintain job architecture frameworks, including job families, role levels, grading structures, and titling conventions.
• Review new and revised positions to assess job size, internal relativity, grading implications, and alignment with established organizational and reward structures.
• Maintain Total Rewards policies, guidelines, methodologies, and supporting documentation to promote consistent and transparent reward decisions.
• Ensure compensation and grading decisions are supported by appropriate analysis, approvals, and documentation in accordance with MBZUAI policies and Delegation of Authority requirements.

• Translate institutional priorities into annual workforce plans, headcount requirements, and hiring forecasts in coordination with Finance and departmental stakeholders.
• Develop workforce models and scenario analyses to assess planned hiring, attrition, workforce growth, hiring sequencing, and associated cost implications.
• Monitor actual headcount against approved workforce plans and identify material variances, emerging requirements, and workforce risks.
• Support workforce planning across academic, research, and professional services populations, accounting for their distinct workforce profiles, talent requirements, and hiring cycles.
• Support organizational design and workforce-shaping initiatives, including structural reviews, role clarity, spans and layers, and workforce composition.
• Provide workforce analysis to support decisions on hiring priorities,…