Assistant Vice President Strategic Services

Position Summary

UTHealth Houston is seeking a dynamic, innovative compensation executive to lead enterprise-wide compensation strategy and serve as a strategic thought partner to institutional leaders within a complex academic healthcare environment. As Assistant Vice President, this leader will shape and oversee compensation philosophy, salary structures, incentive programs, merit strategy, and job architecture, while actively guiding leaders through complex decisions—offering clear options, articulating tradeoffs, and helping shape outcomes that balance competitiveness, equity, compliance, and organizational priorities.

Reporting to the Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer, the AVP will serve as a trusted advisor to senior leadership, delivering data‑driven insights on market trends, regulatory requirements, and financial impacts. This role plays a critical part in developing and aligning compensation strategies for executive leadership and hard‑to‑fill positions across clinical, research, and academic specialties—supporting recruitment and retention in highly competitive talent markets.

The AVP will partner closely with colleagues across Human Resources, Legal, Finance, Payroll, Talent Acquisition, and executive stakeholders to ensure strong governance, compliance, and operational excellence.

The ideal candidate brings deep expertise in compensation design and analytics, experience navigating regulatory complexity, and a passion for building and leading high‑performing teams. This is a unique opportunity to influence institutional strategy and strengthen UTHealth Houston’s ability to attract, retain, and reward exceptional talent—particularly in specialized, high‑demand roles critical to the organization’s mission.

Candidates should have a minimum of 8 years of experience in human resources or finance, including at least 5 years of direct compensation experience and 3 years within an academic healthcare environment.

• Sets strategic direction of the design, analytics, and administration of compensation programs and strategies to include base pay, incentives, merit and the annual performance appraisals cycle by directing the creation and implementation of tools, systems, and programs; ensuring coordinated and timely execution across HR functions and stakeholders; identifying and addressing gaps in execution or communication; implementing contingency plans as needed; and continuously adjusting strategies to meet evolving business demands.
• Manages Human Resources and the President's Office as a client for all compensation needs with a customer‑centric and solutions‑focused approach to include but not limited to job description support, benchmarking, market reviews, incentives, merit and the annual performance appraisal cycle.
• Develops and drafts materials for UTHealth Houston Chief Human Resources Officer and other executive leadership, including analyses, reports, and presentations. Provides input on strategic HR issues as a member of the HR Leadership Team.
• Leads the development and implementation of compensation policies and practices with a customer‑centric and solutions‑focused approach, to include establishing a regular schedule for sharing market trends, internal factors, and other relevant information with stakeholders.
• Evaluates market data for positions and maintains awareness of industry‑leading compensation market conditions to benchmark and oversee staff‑level compensation survey processes. Continuously monitors and analyzes the effectiveness of compensation programs and makes data‑driven recommendations for improvements and optimizations.
• Sets strategic direction for the executive compensation program to align practices, policies and philosophies with UTHealth Houston's strategies and goals.
• Proactively consults with university leadership on compensation matters, offering data‑driven recommendations for annual salary structures and merit pay adjustments, articulating information clearly to ensure understanding of key components and alignment with business objectives.
• Provides scheduled education and training sessions on Compensation…