Salary Range Architecture Framework

How Jobs and Salary Ranges Are Organized

The university’s salary architecture organizes administrative roles in a consistent and transparent way, ensuring similar work is grouped together and aligned with appropriate salary ranges. This structure builds on the Compensation Philosophy and guiding principles, turning them into a practical framework for classification, pay, and career development.

Job Families and Subfamilies

Each administrative position is assigned to a job family, representing a broad field of work, such as Finance & Development, Communications, Student Services, IT, Human Resources, and others.

Within each family, subfamilies define more specialized functional areas. For example, within Student Services, there are Career & Placement Services, Student Health, Disability Services, and Activities & Engagement. Grouping roles in this way ensures that positions requiring similar knowledge and skills are evaluated consistently, both within and across departments.

Please refer to the Job Families & Job Subfamilies section for additional details and guidance.

 

Career Streams

Every role also belongs to one of the two following career streams, based on how work is accomplished:

  • Individual Contributor stream: Roles focused on specialized expertise, analysis, or project work without formal supervisory responsibilities. These roles may guide part-time positions, such as hourly employees and student workers.

  • Management stream: Roles responsible for leading administrative, clerical, and maintenance employees, managing teams, setting direction, and ensuring outcomes.

Career Streams are determined by the responsibilities of the position, not by the individual currently holding the role.

Career Levels

Within each stream, roles are assigned a career level that reflects the scope, complexity, and accountability of the work. Career levels differentiate roles that perform similar functions but carry different weights of responsibility. Factors considered when assigning a level include:

  • Scope & Impact: Defines the extent and consequence of the role's responsibilities and the effectiveness of a department in strategic planning that impacts operations and future direction.
  • Judgment & Influence: Reflects the degree of independence and decision-making authority the role possesses, the complexity of the problems solved, and the ability to influence departmental direction, strategic priorities, or senior leadership through recognized expertise.
  • Leadership & Accountability: Covers the responsibility for formal supervision along with the overall fiscal or operational ownership of the function.
  • Knowledge and Experience: Specifies the minimum required education, the number of years of relevant professional experience, and the depth of functional or specialized knowledge needed, progressing from basic procedural knowledge to mastery-level expertise and strategic application of that knowledge.

Please refer to the Leveling Guide for additional details and guidance.

Salary Grades and Ranges

Each career level corresponds to a salary grade, which defines a range of pay that reflects both internal role value and external market competitiveness. Salary ranges guide hiring, promotions, and future compensation adjustments while maintaining consistency and equity across the University.

By organizing roles through job families, career streams, and career levels, the University ensures that each position is evaluated fairly, aligned with market realities, and connected to a clear salary range. This framework provides transparency and a roadmap for understanding how roles fit within the broader institution and how growth opportunities are defined.

Combined, these grades and ranges constitute the Salary Structures.