Total Rewards Manager

About This Role

As Total Rewards Manager at General Matter, you'll build and own how we pay, reward, and take care of the people restoring America's nuclear fuel supply. You'll set up our compensation and benefits infrastructure and run it day to day, and continue to mature our compensation and benefits strategy, philosophy, and implementation.

The problems here don't come with off-the-shelf answers. How do you benchmark roles that barely exist anywhere else in the country? How do you design one rewards system that works for both first-principles engineers and the plant operators and technicians who will run a nuclear facility around the clock? You'll frame the question, pull the data, build the model, and bring leadership a clear recommendation with the tradeoffs made explicit.

You'll work with a modern stack (Rippling, Carta, Pave) and you'll be expected to build your own tools with AI. This is a hands-on, strategic role working with partners across engineering, nuclear operations, infrastructure, construction, security, legal, finance and people.

If you seek high impact, want true ownership of a function, and are excited by fast-paced, intense, Skunkworks-style work, we encourage you to apply to join our team.

Compensation

• Own market benchmarking: participate in and manage salary surveys and build defensible benchmarks for specialized roles with thin survey coverage.
• Build and maintain compensation bands, leveling alignment, and guidance for offers, promotions, and market adjustments.
• Conduct ongoing compensation analysis, including internal equity reviews, offer modeling, and cost projections, and turn the results into clear recommendations for leadership.
• Run comp review cycles during performance season from start to finish, covering budget modeling, manager guidance, calibration support, and communicating outcomes.
• Partner with Talent Acquisition on competitive offers, and with Finance on headcount and compensation budgeting.

Benefits

• Own our benefits programs end-to-end, including medical, dental, vision, 401(k), and wellness offerings.
• Lead annual benefits renewals: manage broker and carrier relationships, analyze plan performance and cost trends, and negotiate the best outcome for employees and the company.
• Source, evaluate, and implement new benefits vendors as our needs evolve and our workforce grows.
• Build and manage the benefits budget, forecasting costs and finding savings without giving up quality.
• Plan and run open enrollment, and make benefits easy for employees to understand and use.

Compliance & Governance

• Own pay transparency compliance across California and every other state where we hire, including posted salary ranges, pay data reporting, and recordkeeping.
• Maintain compliance with applicable benefits regulations (ERISA, ACA, COBRA, HIPAA) in partnership with brokers, administrators, and counsel.
• Treat all compensation and employee data with strict confidentiality and judgment.

Systems & Tooling

• Administer and optimize our Total Rewards stack (Rippling, Carta, Pave) so the data is clean, connected, and trustworthy.
• Use AI to build tools that make Total Rewards faster and smarter, such as comp calculators, offer modeling tools, cycle workflows, and dashboards for leadership.
• Write clear documentation and guidance so managers and employees understand how and why we pay the way we do.

Basic Qualifications

• Evidence of exceptional ability, such as rewards programs you've built, models or tools you've created, or problems you've solved that had no playbook.
• 5+ years of Total Rewards experience, with hands-on depth in both compensation and benefits.
• Proven experience running benefits renewals, sourcing and implementing new vendors, and building and managing a benefits budget.
• Hands-on experience with market benchmarking, compensation analysis, and supporting or running compensation review cycles.
• Working knowledge of pay transparency laws, including California's requirements.
• Fluency with modern HR and comp tools such as Rippling, Carta, and Pave.
• Experience using AI tools to build models, automations, or internal tools for compensation work.
• Strong analytical and Excel/Sheets modeling skills, plus the ability to turn data into a clear recommendation.
• An exemplary record of handling highly confidential information with discretion.

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Experience administering equity and stock option programs (grants, refreshes, vesting, cap table coordination in Carta).
• Experience designing compensation and benefits for hourly or shift-based workforces (e.g., manufacturing, plant operations, field technicians), including shift differentials, overtime, and premium pay.
• Experience designing benefits and compensation for multiple states.
• Experience at a high-growth startup, especially as an early or first Total Rewards hire.
• Experience in nuclear, energy, aerospace/defense, advanced manufacturing, or other regulated industrial environments.

Additional Requirements

Ability to work extended hours and weekends as necessary.

Compensation and Benefits

The base salary range for this role is $140,000 to $190,000 annually.

Compensation bands are determined by role, level, location, and alignment with market data. Individual level and base pay is determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on job-related skills, education, experience, technical capabilities and internal equity. Please note that the stated salary range is an estimate and may be adjusted based on market conditions, business needs, or other factors.

In addition to base salary, for full-time hires, you may also be eligible for long-term incentives, in the form of stock options, and access to medical, vision & dental coverage as well as access to a 401(k) retirement plan.