Manager- Budgeting & Cost Optimization

As the Manager Budgeting & Cost Optimization based in Gurugram, your primary responsibility will be to drive accurate people cost budgeting, forecasting, and cost optimization within the Total Rewards function. Your role will involve collaborating closely with Finance and HRBPs to provide accurate compensation analytics, MIS reporting, and insightful dashboards to guide leadership decisions. You will lead variance and sensitivity analyses, develop workforce cost models, and ensure headcount planning aligns with financial cycles. Additionally, you will be responsible for team leadership to ensure high performance and effective execution of priorities. Key Responsibilities: - Drive annual and periodic people cost budgeting and forecasting in partnership with Finance and HRBPs - Track actuals vs. budgeted compensation across employee segments (fixed, variable, ctc) and support headcount planning aligned with financial cycles - Create and automate dashboards for key HR/Finance stakeholders, conduct variance analysis, and develop insights on cost drivers, attrition impact, hiring impact, increment impact, headcount phasing, and trend shifts - Build and maintain data models to simulate compensation impacts under various scenarios, support Board-level reporting, and run sensitivity analyses on workforce costs for different business scenarios - Manage the team, provide direction on execution/implementation of tasks, prioritize functional and organizational goals, and ensure team performance & adherence to KPIs/SLA for employees under the rewards team Qualifications Required: - Graduate/Postgraduate degree in Commerce, Finance, HR, Economics, or Analytics; MBA preferred - 5-10 years of relevant experience in HR analytics, compensation MIS, budgeting, or Finance-HR interface roles,