Comp bands at Series B fintech: a worked example

The setup

Series B fintech. 140 employees. Mid-Atlantic-headquartered, predominantly remote. Just closed a $45M B led by a Tier-1 fund. Burn-multiple under control, runway ~28 months, growth at 2.4x year-over-year.

When we engaged, the company had no formal comp bands. They had a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet had been updated by the founder six times over the previous two years, each time after a senior hire negotiation. By Series B, the spreadsheet had nine senior engineers in three different "Senior" levels with overlapping comp ranges, two VPs with no documented level criteria, and a compliance director who was paid 22% above the company's nominal "Director" band.

The CEO described it as "we'll fix this when we have time." The CFO described it as "we have a comp-equity exposure."

They were both right. We started with the second framing.

The constraint stack

Three constraints had to be respected simultaneously:

Constraint 1: post-money budget. The Series B post-money implied a target opex profile that the existing comp ratio was already pushing against. Any comp redesign that raised the median by more than 4% would force decisions on hiring pace.

Constraint 2: state-specific pay transparency. Of the 140 employees, ~30 were in jurisdictions with active pay-transparency laws (NY, CA, CO, WA). Within 90 days, we needed bands that could be disclosed in job postings without creating legal exposure on the existing-employee side.

Constraint 3: banking-talent migration. Three of the senior hires were ex-banking, with comp packages that anchored on banking norms (cash-heavy, equity-light, bonus-rich). Two were ex-tech, with comp packages that anchored on FAANG norms (cash-rich, equity-rich, modest bonus). The "right" Director-level cash number was different for each.

These three constraints aren't compatible without compromise. The work was figuring out which compromises to make and explaining them to the leadership team.

The redesign

We ran the redesign over six weeks. Here's the high-level structure of what landed.

Three career tracks.

• ·Engineering / Product / Design (the technical track)
• ·GTM (sales, marketing, customer success)
• ·Compliance / Risk / Operations (the regulated track)

Each track had eight levels (IC1 through IC5, plus M1 through M3). Each level had documented criteria — scope of impact, decision-making authority, ambiguity handled — that anyone in the company could read. We mapped each existing employee to a level. The mapping conversation took two weeks and surfaced about two dozen mismatches.

Bands per level, geo-aware.

For each level, we set a base salary band (P25 / P50 / P75) anchored on fintech-cohort benchmarks (Levels.fyi, Pave, Carta) for Series B companies. Then we applied geo multipliers:

• ·US Tier 1 (SF, NYC, LA, Boston, Seattle): 1.0
• ·US Tier 2 (Austin, Denver, Chicago, DC, Atlanta): 0.92
• ·US Tier 3 (other US, remote-US): 0.85
• ·International: scaled per market (UK 0.78, EU 0.72, India 0.35, etc.)

Plus a 10–12% premium on the Compliance/Risk track to reflect regulated-talent comp expectations.

Equity strategy by track.

Engineering and Product got equity-heavy packages calibrated to compete against AI-native comp. GTM got modest equity and richer cash + commission. Compliance/Risk got modest equity and richer cash but lower bonus variability than banking norms — the trade was "predictable cash for steady equity vesting." This trade is uncomfortable for ex-banking talent at first. After the fact, retention data has been encouraging.

Refresh logic.

Bands refresh annually. Equity grants refresh on a 4-year clock with target grant values defined per level. Promotion increments are documented (typically 8–15% per level jump, depending on track). Comp adjustments outside the cycle require CFO sign-off and are logged.

The hard conversations

Three categories of hard conversation came out of the redesign:

Conversation 1: the over-paid. Six existing employees were paid materially above the band ceiling for their level. We didn't reduce their cash — that's a retention disaster waiting to happen. We froze their increases until the band catches up to them and re-leveled two of them (where the over-pay reflected actual scope, not historical mis-leveling). The other four are now flagged in our system as "above-band" and won't get a comp adjustment until the bands grow into them.

Conversation 2: the under-leveled. Eleven existing employees were doing work materially above their nominal level. We re-leveled them and adjusted comp accordingly. This was the most expensive part of the redesign — about 80 basis points of payroll — but it fixed an attrition risk that was already showing up in 1:1s.

Conversation 3: the comp ratio. Two senior leaders had been paid through one-off negotiations that didn't line up with the new bands. We had to rewrite their comp letters, retroactively justify the structure, and bring them into the band logic. Both conversations went well because the redesign was framed as "we're standardizing for everyone, not just you" — and they could see the matrix.

What the redesign produced

Three artifacts that now run the comp function:

The leveling matrix. A document anyone in the company can read that shows level criteria across all three tracks. New hires are leveled against this. Promotions are justified against this.

The bands sheet. Refreshed annually. Geo-aware. Track-aware. Audit-ready for pay-transparency disclosures in active states.

The decision log. Every comp adjustment outside the cycle is logged with the rationale. This is what makes pay-equity audits defensible. Every decision has a written reason that can be re-examined.

What we'd do differently

Two things, in retrospect, that we'd push the company to do earlier:

Bring in the redesign at Series A, not Series B. The cost of the same redesign at 60 employees would have been a third of the cost at 140 — fewer mismatches to resolve, simpler conversations, less retroactive justification. Most companies don't have the appetite for a comp redesign at Series A; the founder is still managing it in their head. The right move is to do the foundational design before the spreadsheet gets to nine senior engineers in three "Senior" levels.

Document the comp philosophy before the bands. We wrote the comp philosophy after the bands were drafted. In hindsight, the philosophy should come first: how does this company think about cash vs. equity, geo policy, banking-talent vs. tech-talent norms, comp ratio targets. The bands are the mechanism; the philosophy is the why. With the philosophy documented first, the bands fall out more naturally.

What this means if you're a Series A or B fintech

Three things to ask, in order:

• ·Do we have documented level criteria? If not, the spreadsheet you have is going to become the same nine-Seniors problem in twelve months.
• ·Are our bands defensible against pay-transparency law in our active states? If you're not sure, you have audit exposure now.
• ·Have we written down our comp philosophy? If not, every senior negotiation will pull the structure in a different direction.

If any of these is "no," there's a 6-week design phase that catches it before the cost compounds. If all three are "yes," refresh the bands annually and the system runs.