Associate Director, Customer Compensation & Policy

About the Role Within Global Customer Experience (GCX), our mission is to advance the HelloFresh customer relationship from reactive resolution to proactive, trust-building service. The compensation function sits at the heart of that mission: it is the mechanism through which the business acknowledges failures, restores customer confidence, and, when done well, turns a bad experience into a reason to stay. The Associate Director, Customer Compensation & Policy is responsible for the global strategy, architecture, and governance of how HelloFresh compensates customers across all markets and brands. This is not a policy maintenance role. It is a strategic function that sits at the intersection of customer economics, operational data, behavioral experimentation, and cross-functional influence. You will own one of the most financially material and customer-sensitive levers in the business. You will shape a multi-year roadmap and hold peers in Operations, Technology, Finance, and Market Leadership accountable for the quality of inputs that determine how well and how efficiently we recover customer trust. The ideal candidate brings a rare combination: analytical rigor sharp enough to architect a global compensation engine from first principles, and the executive presence to drive adoption across a complex, multi-market organization without formal authority over most of the people they need to move. What You'll Own Global Compensation Strategy & Engine Architecture • Own the end-to-end strategic vision for how HelloFresh categorizes customer errors and determines compensation across all markets, brands, and contact channels. • Lead the design and continuous evolution of the compensation engine: along with Tech, you’ll define the the rules, thresholds, segmentation logic, and automation frameworks that govern recovery decisions at scale. • Define the principles that govern trade-offs between customer generosity and cost discipline and translate those principles into operational rules that hold across market complexity and brand variation. • Partner with Technology to ensure the compensation engine is scalable, auditable, and capable of supporting dynamic, AI-assisted decisioning as the product evolves. Experimentation & Behavioral Economics • Set the global roadmap for compensation experimentation: A/B testing across offer types, value levels, channel timing, and segmentation variables. • Apply behavioral economics frameworks to compensation design understanding how recovery offers shape long-term retention, repurchase behavior, and brand perception, not just immediate satisfaction. • Define the measurement framework for experimentation: what constitutes a successful test, what confidence warrants global rollout, and how results are synthesized into durable policy change. • Partner with Analytics & Insights to ensure test design, sample integrity, and rollout analysis meet a rigorous standard of evidence. Financial Stewardship & Cost Governance • Own the global compensation P&L line: tracking spend by market, error category, customer segment, and channel — and holding yourself accountable to defined cost-per-incident and avoidable-contact targets. • Identify and close financial leakage: cases where compensation is being issued without policy justification, at incorrect values, or at the wrong frequency. • Build the reporting infrastructure that makes compensation economics visible to GCX leadership, market GMs, and Finance — with the granularity and context needed to drive decisions. • Define the right balance between cost optimization and customer lifetime value investment: not just 'spend less' but 'spend where it earns back. Fraud Policy & Global Governance • Own the global fraud and abuse prevention framework: the policies, detection logic, thresholds, and escalation paths that protect the business without creating friction for genuine customers. • Lead the governance rhythm for policy: quarterly reviews, market exception management, escalation adjudication, and framework versioning across a multi-brand, multi-market environment. • Act as the final authority on complex, cross-market policy gaps — resolving ambiguity with speed, consistency, and strategic clarity rather than routing decisions upward by default. • Maintain global standards while creating principled space for market-level adaptation where local context genuinely requires it. Cross-Functional Leadership & Stakeholder Accountability • Represent the compensation function in senior forums translating customer economics into requirements that peers in Operations, Technology, Finance, and Market GMs must respond to. • Hold cross-functional partners accountable for the upstream data quality, operational accuracy, and system reliability that the compensation engine depends on. • Drive adoption of policy changes across markets and brands, building communication and change management plans that make new frameworks land — not just launch. • Influence at VP and Director level across multiple functions; escalate only strategic blockers, not routine alignment. What You'll Bring Education • MBA or equivalent postgraduate qualification required. • Undergraduate degree in Economics, Business, Engineering, or a quantitative discipline. Experience • 8–12 years of progressive experience in customer strategy, pricing, operations, or a directly adjacent domain with meaningful exposure to global, multi-market environments. • Demonstrated track record of owning a financially significant operational lever and managing it with both analytical precision and strategic judgment. • Prior experience leading and developing teams; comfort operating as a senior individual contributor and a people leader simultaneously. • Background in subscription commerce, logistics, or consumer-facing operations strongly preferred. Familiarity with the economics of customer recovery in high-volume, low-margin environments is a distinct advantage. Technical & Analytical • Advanced proficiency in SQL and data analysis; able to build and pressure-test the analytical models that underpin policy decisions without delegating the logic to others. • Fluency with experimentation methodology: test design, statistical significance, holdout analysis, and the translation of results into policy not just reporting. • Experience working with or alongside engineering teams to define product and system requirements for rules-based or AI-assisted decisioning tools. • Comfort with financial modeling: building the business case for compensation investment, forecasting spend impact, and tracking actuals against plan. Leadership & Influence • Senior executive presence: able to walk into a GM, COO, or CFO conversation with a clear point of view, defend it under pressure, and leave with alignment. • A credible voice with peers and upward stakeholders not because of title, but because of the quality of analysis and clarity of communication. • Structured and decisive under ambiguity: able to make a defensible call with incomplete information and adjust as evidence develops. • Genuinely collaborative across markets and functions able to hold people to standards without damaging the relationships needed to sustain them. What we offer • Modern and comfortable working space with great co-workers in Berlin-Kreuzberg • Discount for HelloFresh boxes and Convini products • Development possibilities along with internal trainings and a yearly Learning & Development budget • Flexible working hours including Work From Home/Work from Abroad/Sabbatical Policy, as well as a home office set up budget • Extensive Onboarding and Buddy Program • Social events including team events, Friday beers, company runs, book club, etc. • Discounted fitness offers with our Urban Sports Club and John Reed partners and yoga classes • Well-being initiatives in cooperation with Headspace and Spill • Childcare and company pension scheme benefit • Monthly transportation budget via NAVIT