What Is Job Architecture?
Job architecture is the structured framework that defines how roles, levels, and functions are organized across your company. It answers three fundamental questions: what kinds of work exist in the organization, at what level of seniority or scope, and how those roles relate to each other.
A typical job architecture has five building blocks:
Component | What it defines | Example |
Organization units | The departments, teams, and divisions in your company | Engineering, Sales, Finance, People |
Job families | Groups of roles that require similar skills and serve a similar function | Software Engineering, Product Management, Customer Success |
Job levels | The seniority or grade levels that apply across the organization | IC1, IC2, IC3, M1, M2 — or Junior, Mid, Senior, Lead, Principal |
Jobs/roles | Specific roles that sit at the intersection of a job family and a level | Senior Software Engineer (IC3), Sales Manager (M2) |
Grades | The organization wide grade that a specific Job/role is placed in. | 5,6,7,8,9 |
Together, these components give you a consistent, organization-wide language for talking about work — regardless of how job titles vary across teams.
Why Your Company Needs Job Architecture
Without a clear job architecture, compensation decisions happen in a vacuum. Individual managers negotiate salaries based on gut feel and market data they've found themselves. Similar roles end up with different titles and very different pay, and nobody has a complete picture of whether the inconsistencies are justified.
A well-designed job architecture solves this by giving you:
A common definition of "equal value work" — essential for pay equity analysis and EU Pay Transparency Directive compliance. You can't compare pay fairly without first defining which roles are comparable.
Consistent pay decisions — when everyone knows what level a role is, compensation discussions are grounded in structure rather than negotiation.
Defensible pay equity reports — regulators and employees will ask how you determined which roles are of equal value. Your job architecture is the answer.
A foundation for growth — as you hire, promote, and restructure, a clear framework keeps compensation consistent over time.
Under the EU Pay Transparency Directive, employers must be able to explain their pay structures to employees on request. Job architecture makes this possible.
How Job Architecture Works in Evenpay
In Evenpay, Job Architecture is the structural backbone of the platform. Everything else — pay equity analysis, compensation reviews, pay information requests — is built on top of it. Navigate to Positions in the main menu to access it.
The Positions view is organized into four sections: Positions, Levels, Families, Organization Units. You can manage each independently.
Step 1: Set Up Organization Units
Organization units represent your company's structure — departments, business units, teams. They determine how employees are grouped for reporting and access control.
To set up your org units:
Go to Positions → Organization Units
Add your top-level units first (e.g. Evenpay Oy, Evenpay Ab, Evenpay LLC)
Add sub-units under the relevant parent to build your hierarchy (e.g. Operations, Services, etc.)
Make sure every employee is assigned to an org unit — employees without one won't be included in unit-level analysis
If you imported your data from a file, Evenpay will have created org units automatically based on the department values in your file. Review these to make sure the hierarchy is correct.
Step 2: Define Job Levels
Job levels are the most important component of your job architecture for pay equity purposes. They define what "equal value work" means — and they're what Evenpay uses to group employees for comparison in pay gap analysis.
Go to Positions → Levels and define your level framework. Common approaches include:
Track-based levels — separate tracks for individual contributors and managers (e.g. IC1–IC5, M1–M4)
Grade-based levels — a single numeric or alphanumeric scale that applies across all roles (e.g. Grade 1–10)
Title-based levels — using seniority descriptors (Junior, Mid, Senior, Lead, Principal, Staff)
For each level, you can define a name, a description of what the level represents, and optionally a pay range (minimum, midpoint, maximum). Pay ranges anchor compensation decisions and make it easy to see who falls outside the expected band for their level.
Evenpay also uses grades to group job levels that represent work of equal value — for example, IC3, M2, and P2 might all map to the same grade. Grade-based comparison is the primary basis for EU Pay Transparency Directive reporting. The organization can however define their own definition of work of equal value in the Settings.
If you imported your data from a file, Evenpay will have created job levels and their respective grades automatically based on the Job/Role specific values in your file. Review these to make sure the hierarchy is correct.
Step 3: Create Job Families
Job families group roles that require similar expertise and serve a similar function, regardless of which department they sit in. They let you analyze pay gaps by function — which is often more meaningful than by org unit.
Go to Positions → Families and create families that reflect the major functional areas in your organization. Examples: Software Engineering, Data & Analytics, Product Management, Sales, Customer Success, Finance, People & Culture, Legal.
Keep job families broad enough to be meaningful groupings, but specific enough that the roles within them are genuinely comparable.
If you imported your data from a file, Evenpay will have created job families automatically based on the Job/Role specific values in your file. Review these to make sure the information is correct.
Step 4: Define Jobs/Roles
Positions are the specific jobs or roles that employees hold — each one sits at the intersection of a job family and a job level. A position like "Senior Software Engineer" belongs to the Software Engineering job family at the IC3 (or equivalent) level.
Go to Positions → Positions to create and manage positions. For each position you can define:
Position name and description
The job family and level it belongs to
Required skills, certifications and additional requirements
Salary band (can also be maintained in a grade level, and inherited)
Once positions are defined, you can assign employees to them. This gives you the most granular level of pay gap analysis — comparing pay within specific positions.
If you imported your data from a file, Evenpay will have created positions automatically based on the Job/Role specific values in your file. Review these to make sure the information is correct.
Connecting Job Architecture to Pay Equity
Your job architecture directly shapes the quality of your pay equity analysis. Here's how:
Job levels → grade comparisons. The tier groupings you define can determine which employees are considered to be doing "work of equal value." This is the foundation of directive-compliant pay gap reporting.
Job families → functional pay gaps. You can see where gaps concentrate by function — is Engineering paying equitably? What about Sales?
Org units → departmental pay gaps. Identify which parts of the organization need the most attention.
Positions → role-level analysis. Drill down to specific roles when you need the most granular view, and to make sure there aren't significant unjustified pay gaps within the smallest group of comparison.
The more consistently your employees are assigned to levels and positions, the more precise and actionable your pay equity analysis will be.
Frequently Asked Questions
We don't have a formal job level structure today. Where do we start?
Start with levels — they have the biggest impact on your pay equity analysis. You don't need positions or even job families to get started. Define 4–8 levels that reflect the real seniority spectrum in your organization, assign your employees to them, and you'll already have a meaningful framework for analysis. Evenpay has a default Job Evaluation framework built in, containing grades 1-8 for Individual Contributors, and 5-9 for Manager roles, each with a ready made description.
How granular should our job levels be?
Enough to meaningfully distinguish between different scopes of responsibility, but not so granular that each level only has a handful of people. As a starting point, aim for levels where the pay ranges don't overlap significantly — if IC2 and IC3 have nearly identical pay, they may not be distinct enough levels.
Can we change our job architecture after we've imported employees?
Yes. You can update org units, job levels, families, and positions at any time. When you run a new pay equity analysis, it will use your current architecture. Changes don't affect historical analysis snapshots.
What's the difference between a job level and a grade?
Job levels are your internal naming convention (e.g. IC3, Senior Engineer). Tiers are how Evenpay groups those levels for pay gap comparison purposes — mapping different tracks that represent equivalent scope and responsibility onto the same comparison group. Grades are configured in the Job Architecture settings and are used specifically for EU Pay Transparency Directive reporting.
Do all employees need to be assigned to a position?
Yes. Position assignment is mandatory and represents the most granular level of analysis. Positions are linked to specific Levels, and Grades, and are used to identify pay differences within work of equal value.