Pay-equity report
Bands are public. Audits are annual. Corrections are non-negotiable.
- First audit
- Q1 2027 · projected
- Audit cadence
- Annual
- External review
- Biennial
- Correction window
- 30 days
Methodology
How we set and audit compensation
- 01
One band per role, one modifier per location
Base salary and equity are set by role band. Location adjusts for cost of labour using a published modifier — not by haggling. A senior engineer in Singapore and a senior engineer in New York earn the same base salary multiplied by the local modifier. - 02
External benchmarks
We benchmark against senior-staff roles at DTCC, CME, LCH, ICE, Stripe Infrastructure, and comparable fintech infrastructure companies. Data sources: Radford, Mercer, and direct role-by-role reference calls. - 03
Annual internal audit
An annual internal pay-equity audit runs in Q1 of each year. The audit compares actual compensation to the band for every employee and flags any deviation greater than 3%. Deviations are either corrected or justified in writing. - 04
External review
Every other year the internal audit is reviewed by an external firm with expertise in EU Pay Transparency Directive methodology. External findings are published on this page, with role-level data anonymised.
Compensation structure
The components
- Base salary
- Band × location modifier
Each role has a named band (e.g. ENG-L5). Location modifier is published internally.
- Equity
- Band-based · 4yr vest, 1yr cliff
Initial grants sized by band. Refresh grants in the top-performer process, not as ritual.
- Performance bonus
- None during v1
No discretionary annual bonus during the v1 build. Compensation is base + equity.
- Sign-on bonus
- None
We do not use sign-on bonuses to paper over below-band offers.
- Salary review
- Annual in Q1
Written review for every employee, driven by scope expansion and market data.
- Equity refresh
- Top-performer grants in Q1
Meaningful grants for employees in the top band of performance. Not across-the-board.
- Retention grants
- Case by case
Occasional, approved by the CEO, and disclosed to the board.
Audit readiness
Where we stand today
- Team size
- 0
- Published bands
- 0
- Location modifiers
- 0
- Target variance tolerance
- 0%
April 2026. Too small for a statistically meaningful audit; first full audit runs Q1 2027.
One per engineering, operations, regulatory, legal, finance, and BD track.
New York, London, and Singapore as anchor points.
Deviations greater than 3% from the band require written justification or correction.
What we will publish
The first audit report · Q1 2027
- 01
Aggregated statistics
Mean and median compensation by discipline and level, broken out by gender and under-represented groups. Statistical power permitting — if cells are too small for meaningful analysis, we note that rather than publishing spurious numbers. - 02
Gap analysis
Any identified gap exceeding 3% compensation variance within a band, with remediation actions taken and timeframes. We correct first and explain second. - 03
Bands themselves
We publish the actual band structure — including the salary ranges and equity ranges — for each role and level. This is the same information a candidate sees on a first recruiter call. - 04
External review findings
When the external review runs (Q1 2028 first), the findings and our response are published on this page verbatim. Independence is preserved.
Why this matters
A note on the approach
Pay equity is not a legal compliance exercise. It is the bare minimum for a company that claims to run on merit. If we hire the best operators we can find and then underpay half of them by 8%, we will lose them — and we will deserve to. Publishing this makes the commitment externally accountable.
Questions
HR answers directly.
If you are an applicant, employee, or journalist with a question about Wavestar's pay-equity approach — HR responds directly inside one business day.