Senior compensation & benefits manager

When travelers are searching for a hotel, we want the obvious choice to be trivago! By comparing prices from major booking sites, we're making it easy for people to find hotels they want at a price they'll love. In the lively city of Düsseldorf, we seize opportunities to learn everyday, innovate, and make an enduring mark on the travel industry. A career at trivago is a journey designed for people who crave continuous development and want to thrive in a high-performing team. Here you will find those who aren't afraid of change but rather embrace it, turning every challenge into a pathway for growth. Join trivago, work with a great team, and grow with us!

Join us in making a difference

Our Performance & Recognition team owns how trivago rewards its talents: from pay range design and job architecture to benefits, incentives, and pay equity. We partner closely with the business to build a caring performance culture where great work is recognized and fairly rewarded. We're at an exciting point: the foundations are in a good place, and there's real space to grow, experiment, and shape what comes next. trivago is building AI-first and this role sits right at the frontier of what that means for how we design, value, and reward work.
As our Senior Compensation & Benefits Manager, you'll be the strategic heart of how trivago thinks about total rewards — shaping how pay, performance, and job architecture work together to create a reward experience that is competitive, equitable, and built to support trivago's caring performance culture. You'll have real space to make it your own and bring your own ideas. Not everything will work first time, and that's fine — we stay curious, learn fast, and move on. And you won't be doing it alone: we are bouncing ideas, challenging each other's thinking, and building things we're proud of together. This role can be fulfilled at 32 or more hours per week as part of trivago's evolving, AI-supported way of working. If you're analytically sharp, genuinely curious about where compensation practice is heading, and energized by working in an environment where things actually change because of what you do — we'd love to meet you.

How you’ll make an impact:

• Drive the end-to-end C&B strategy alongside your team — from pay range design and compa-ratio analysis to total rewards frameworks that reflect trivago's caring performance culture.
• Lead the annual salary review process, partnering closely with the Business Partner Team and Leads to ensure fair, competitive, and well-communicated outcomes.
• Continuously evolve our job and reward architecture — staying curious about how roles, skills, and the market are shifting, and keeping our structure one step ahead.
• Bring proactive analysis and clear recommendations to Talents & Culture Partners, People Leads, and the Leadership Team — not just when asked, but when you spot something worth raising.
• Design and refine short-term incentive (and RSU frameworks), always asking whether what we have is still the right answer.
• Help us navigate an AI-shaped comp landscape: from benchmarking newly emerging roles where market data is thin, to rethinking how we define levels and value skills, to exploring how we reward impact created with AI — there are no perfect answers yet, and that's what makes it genuinely interesting.
• Mentor and collaborate with teammates — we grow together, and your curiosity makes the whole team sharper.

What you'll need to thrive:

• Solid expertise in compensation and benefits — benchmarking, pay structure, incentive design, and total rewards (ideally in a tech context).
• Strong analytical skills: comfortable with benchmarks, pay equity analysis, budget modeling, and compensation surveys — and curious enough to build your own frameworks when ready-made ones don't quite fit.
• Working knowledge of relevant legislation, including EU Pay Transparency Directive requirements.
• The ability to own compensation topics end-to-end and drive them forward.
• Clear, confident communication: you can translate comp data into stories that make sense for Talents & Culture Partners, People Leads, and Leadership Team alike.
• A genuine curiosity about where the world of work and rewards is heading — you follow trends not because you have to, but because you find it fascinating; AI, skills-based pay, new ways of valuing impact — these topics light you up.
• A collaborative spirit and a bias for trying things — you're comfortable testing ideas, learning what doesn't work, and iterating alongside a team that has your back.

Not ticking every box? We still want to hear from you. Apply, tell us what motivates you, and you could be a great match—now or in the future. Your application does not need to include a photo.

This is the recruitment process that you can expect for this role:

• Introduction Call
• Technical Interview
• Interview with Team/Stakeholders 
• Final Interview 

What you can look forward to:

Life happens. We offer self-determined vacation (with a minimum of 25 vacation days), flexible working hours, up to 2 work from home days weekly. Additionally you can work remotely from a different location, within Germany or selected countries abroad for up to 20 days per year. You also get free access to the Heycare platform for personalized nanny assistance, and an on-campus kids room.

As you grow, so do we. This is why at trivago, we prioritize your development, offer personalized coaching through Nilo, and provide workshops, educational meetups, conferences, free online learning courses, and access to a fully-equipped campus library.

Moving to join us? No problem. You can count on the visa support from our talent support team, a relocation package, interest-free newcomer loan, free language classes, regular team and many company-wide events to build experiences together.

Enjoy your office days. Use your daily canteen budget to share lunch with colleagues in our canteen, help yourself to complimentary snacks and drinks in our kitchens, choose from a variety of fitness options with our on-site gym, sports classes, and Urban Sports Club membership, and enjoy the comfort of ergonomic desks and focused work areas.

Thank you for considering a career at trivago! Our commitment to fostering an inclusive and enriching environment for all talents is at the heart of what we do. We understand that embarking on a new job opportunity is a blend of excitement and curiosity. Should any questions arise before you apply, feel free to reach out to us at joinus@trivago.com . Join us in our mission to make a positive impact on global travel, w e look forward to your application!

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