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:

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:

1. Go to Positions → Organization Units
2. Add your top-level units first (e.g. Evenpay Oy, Evenpay Ab, Evenpay LLC)
3. Add sub-units under the relevant parent to build your hierarchy (e.g. Operations, Services, etc.)
4. 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. Check out Managing Organization Units for step by step walkthrough.

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. Check out Managing Job Levels & Grades for step by step walkthrough.

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. Check out Managing Job Families for step by step walkthrough.

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. Check out Managing Positions for step by step walkthrough.

Step 5: Evaluate the Grade of Your Jobs/Roles

Once your positions are defined, the next step is to evaluate them — that is, to score each job/role against a structured set of criteria so that its grade assignment is based on the actual demands and complexity of the work, not just title or seniority assumptions.

Go to Positions → Position Evaluation. Evenpay comes with a built-in evaluation framework based on point factor based job evaluation methodology, covering factors like knowledge requirements, problem-solving complexity, accountability, and working conditions. You can configure or customise the framework under Settings → Evaluation Framework.

For each position you evaluate, Evenpay calculates an evaluation score (on a 0–100 scale). Each grade has a defined score range — for example, Grade 5 might cover scores from 45 to 60. When a position's score is calculated, Evenpay shows whether the position falls within the expected range for its current grade, or whether it should be reclassified.

This step is particularly important for:

• EU Pay Transparency Directive compliance — the Directive requires that equal value work is determined through a neutral, objective job evaluation method. Position Evaluation is how you document and demonstrate that.
• Identifying misgraded roles — positions that score significantly above or below their current grade's range may indicate structural inconsistencies worth reviewing.
• Defensible grade assignments — if an employee or regulator asks why a role is graded at a certain level, a documented evaluation score provides a clear, objective answer.

You don't need to evaluate every position at once. Start with the roles where grade accuracy matters most — typically those used as equal-value comparison groups in pay equity reporting.

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 grade 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). Grades 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.

Updated on: 08/04/2026