This role steps into a live compensation pressure point: a heavy civil contractor scaling through major public infrastructure work while field leaders need hiring and retention decisions resolved faster than legacy pay structures can support.
Public infrastructure backlog driving rewards discipline
Jacksonville Daily Record reporting and company project disclosures show Superior Construction at 1,246 employees, 2025 revenue of $578.3 million, an active $8.25 million training facility build, and a backlog tied to a $195 million highway extension, a $643 million joint venture interchange project, and a $328 million emergency restoration effort. That scale matters because leadership is protecting delivery capacity in a labor-starved market by putting capital into field talent pipelines, safety performance, and execution discipline, which puts direct pressure on support functions to standardize programs, contain labor cost, and reduce avoidable turnover without slowing project staffing.
Reactive pay decisions across multi-state field operations
This role owns the operating spine of total rewards: compensation structure, market benchmarking, bonus logic, policy enforcement, and compliance discipline across a business where labor demand is urgent and approvals move through operational and family-owned leadership layers. This role owns the delivery of order and credibility to retention exceptions, hiring offers, vehicle-use complaints, salaried overtime friction, and uneven onboarding practices while documenting decisions clearly enough to hold up under budget pressure and internal scrutiny.
Pay governance that can survive project pressure
- Compensation Architecture: Audit current pay bands, job mappings, and market position data, then deliver a compensation structure that reduces ad hoc offer-making and retention exceptions.
- Decision Control: Document, triage, and escalate off-cycle pay requests, sign-on demands, and internal equity disputes with clear approval logic and cost impact.
- Variable Pay Discipline: Execute bonus plan administration and enforce payout rules that align with operating performance instead of manager preference.
- Compliance Containment: Isolate risk in exempt classification, overtime treatment, and policy inconsistency, then deploy corrective actions that stand up across growth regions.
Operating credibility required before strategic influence
- Compensation Depth: 60+ months of progressive compensation, total rewards, or broad HR experience with direct ownership of pay administration and market analysis.
- Regulatory Command: Working command of FLSA classification, salaried overtime risk, pay equity review, and multi-state policy enforcement.
- Systems and Stakeholder Range: Proven command of HRIS and spreadsheet-heavy analysis while enforcing policy with operational leaders on sensitive pay decisions.
Jacksonville base salary against on-site rewards ownership
For Jacksonville, this base salary range lands in the solid management tier for in-house total rewards work, but the trade-off is full on-site presence and direct exposure to politically sensitive compensation decisions. The value is strongest for a candidate who wants operating scope and visible business impact more than a low-friction corporate environment.
- Base Salary Range: $110,000 – $145,000 USD / Year
- Training Investment: The company is actively funding an $8.25 million training facility, which signals long-term investment in workforce capability rather than short-term staffing patchwork alone.
- Career Signal: This role builds a credible path toward Senior Total Rewards Manager, Director of Compensation, or Head of Total Rewards inside labor-intensive operating companies.
Before you accept the political weight of pay decisions
- The Physical Presence Directive
- Location: Jacksonville, FL. Status: On-site. This role is tied to the Jacksonville office with in-person attendance as the default operating model.
- Relocation Posture
- Relocation support is not the operating priority here. Leadership capital is directed toward field execution, training infrastructure, and labor retention, so this search is best suited to candidates already in market or ready to self-fund a move.
- The Candidate This Role Is Built For
- This role is built for an ascent-stage total rewards professional who wants to turn messy, high-stakes compensation work into a visible operating credential and should be avoided by candidates who need clean authority lines before taking ownership.
Green Flags
- Advantage: Resume Equity: Eighteen months here gives the candidate a serious operating credential in building or tightening total rewards inside a scaled infrastructure contractor where pay decisions affect retention, hiring, and project delivery.
- Advantage: Business Visibility: Because rewards decisions sit close to labor cost and staffing pressure, this role has direct exposure to leadership priorities instead of being buried as a back-office administration post.
Red Flags
- Warning Sign: Constrained Authority: The daily pain point is clear: this manager is expected to impose structure on compensation decisions while final authority remains distributed across operational leaders and family-owned leadership layers.
- Warning Sign: Reactive Case Load: Expect retention exceptions, hiring pressure, vehicle-use complaints, salaried overtime friction, and uneven onboarding issues to arrive as urgent problems before the underlying system is fully standardized.
