Why Job Leveling Matters
Job leveling creates a consistent framework for defining roles based on their scope, responsibilities, impact, and expectations. It supports core People programs such as compensation, career development, performance management, workforce planning, and succession planning.
In Kamsa, job leveling also helps improve the accuracy of market compensation comparisons. Job titles alone do not always indicate whether two employees are performing work at the same level. By consistently assigning employees to Kamsa Job Families and Job Levels, you can make more meaningful comparisons across similar roles.
Consistent job leveling helps your company:
Create clearer career paths
Align Company Job Titles and Business Titles to consistent roles
Compare employees with similar scope and responsibilities
Improve the accuracy of Compa-Ratios and market compensation comparisons
Support more consistent compensation and advancement decisions
Job leveling should also be reviewed over time as roles change, new job families are introduced, and your organization grows.
Job Leveling with Your Kamsa Consultant
During onboarding, your Kamsa Consultant will guide your leadership team through structured job leveling sessions.
Together, you will:
Compare employee roles, including scope, impact, and responsibilities, with Kamsa’s Job Level framework
Align roles to Kamsa Job Families and Job Levels
Establish consistent Business Titles
Establish career paths based on your organization's business needs.
The number of levels needed may vary by Job Family. For example, a Software Engineering career path may include more levels than an Administrative Assistant career path.
Once leveling is finalized, each employee’s Kamsa Job Match and Job Level are recorded in Employee Data. This helps ensure that compensation ranges and Compa-Ratios are based on the appropriate role and level.
Job leveling also provides a consistent framework leaders can use for:
Compensation and pay equity analysis
Budgeting and workforce planning
Career progression
Performance discussions tied to role expectations
Career Paths in Kamsa
Career Paths is the workspace used to build, review, and maintain your company’s job leveling structure.
It includes four main areas:
Level Descriptions
View the Job Levels Chart, which shows both management (E/M) and individual contributor (IC) tracks.
Compare how scope and expectations align across the IC and management tracks. For example, an IC4 and M3 may have similar organizational scope, while the M3 role includes direct people management responsibilities.
Review a summary and detailed description for each level.
Level descriptions include factors such as:
Responsibility
Organizational Impact
Knowledge
Leadership
Work Latitude
Interactions
Experience
Years of experience are provided as a general recruiting guideline and should not be used as the primary factor when determining an employee’s level.
👉 Tip: Focus on the expectations, scope, and responsibilities of the role rather than years of experience alone.
Job Families
Define current and future career paths for each job family.
Use Business Titles to unify multiple Company Job Titles under one consistent role.
Example: Front-End Engineer and Back-End Engineer both align to the Business Title Software Engineer at the same job level.
Add job families as business needs grow.
Use the Titles Across Org view to see how titles and career paths align across the organization.
View the list of Kamsa Job Family descriptions.
Planning
Identify Level Reviewers, typically leaders responsible for reviewing employees within their organization.
Track leveling meetings and assign reviewers their scope of responsibility.
Each reviewer only sees the job families and employees within their org.
Level Reviewers
Conduct collaborative sessions where leaders review and confirm job matches and levels for their employees.
Create a session for a leader and, when appropriate, include managers within their organization.
Break larger reviews into multiple sessions to keep discussions focused and manageable.
FAQs
How are employees classified into levels?
Job Levels are based on the scope and expectations of the role rather than title alone. Leaders review roles with their Kamsa consulatant using factors such as:
Work Experience – Typical experience associated with the role.
Knowledge – The expertise required to perform the work.
Responsibility – organizational scope/accountability.
Work Latitude – independence, supervision, and span of control.
Organizational Impact – impact of responsibilities on company outcomes.
Interactions – nature and purpose of internal/external contacts.
These factors should be considered together when determining the appropriate Job Level.
How were Kamsa job levels established?
Kamsa’s job level framework is based on best practices for compensation and job architecture and frameworks.
Can employees use a different title on business cards or LinkedIn?
Yes. In some cases, an employee may use a different external or client-facing title, subject to your company’s internal policies and manager approval.
The employee’s Business Title and Kamsa Job Match can remain standardized in Kamsa for leveling and compensation purposes.
Can you add a job to Kamsa that I don’t see available?
Contact us at [email protected] with the role or level you’re looking for.
There may already be a Kamsa Job Match that can be used for the role. If not, Kamsa reviews Job Families and jobs as part of its regular market data refresh process and considers client requests when evaluating additions.
What is the difference between IC and M levels?
The Career Paths page provides definitions for each job level.
The Job Levels denote the level of experience, knowledge, work latitude, impact, scope, and responsibilities associated with the job and are used to match the market job and respective market compensation data more accurately.
Individual Contributors
IC1 to IC6 - Employees who do not have direct report(s) or managerial responsibilities.
Management
M1 to M6 and E1 to E3 - Employees who have direct report(s) and managerial and/or leadership responsibilities.
What's the difference between Company Job Titles and Business Titles in Kamsa?
Company Job Title is the title your organization uses for an employee, such as Senior Front End Engineer or Account Executive, UK.
Business Title is the standardized internal title used to group similar roles consistently. For example, Senior Front End Engineer and Senior Back End Engineer might both use the Business Title Senior Software Engineer.
Kamsa Job Match connects the employee's role to the appropriate Kamsa job for market benchmarking and salary ranges.
Company Job Title → Business Title → Kamsa Job Match
Business Titles are initially populated based on employee data and can be edited as needed. In many cases, the Company Job Title and Business Title may be the same.