Job Architecture & Classification
The organizing system that makes every other compensation program work. Job families, leveling frameworks, FLSA classification, and the foundation for scalable pay infrastructure.
Job Architecture Is the Foundation Everything Else Sits On
You cannot build reliable salary structures on top of a messy job framework. You cannot run a defensible pay equity analysis when you have 400 job titles for 350 employees. You cannot explain career progression to employees when every promotion is a custom negotiation.
Job architecture is the organizing system that defines how jobs relate to each other in your organization. It includes job families, sub-families, career levels, title conventions, and the evaluation methodology that determines where each role sits in the hierarchy. It is the least glamorous part of compensation work and the most consequential.
The Barksdale Group designs job architectures for organizations between 200 and 2,000 employees. We specialize in building frameworks that are rigorous enough for regulatory defense, practical enough for managers to use, and flexible enough to absorb growth and organizational change.
What Job Architecture Includes
Job Family and Sub-Family Taxonomy. We organize your roles into logical groupings (families) and specializations (sub-families) that reflect how work actually flows through your organization. A well-designed taxonomy typically has 8-15 job families for a mid-market company. Too few and you lose meaningful distinctions. Too many and the system collapses under its own weight.
For a 700-employee technology services company, we designed a taxonomy with 11 job families and 28 sub-families. The previous state was 340 unique job titles with no grouping logic. After implementation, every role mapped to a family, sub-family, and career level, which enabled clean survey matching, defensible pay equity analysis, and a career framework employees could actually navigate.
Career Leveling Framework. We define progression levels within each family with clear criteria for what differentiates one level from the next. Most organizations need 5-8 levels spanning individual contributor and management tracks. Each level has documented competency expectations, scope of responsibility, and decision-making authority. Employees and managers can look at the framework and understand what "getting to the next level" actually requires.
Job Evaluation Methodology. We apply structured evaluation methods to determine the relative value of each job. We work with multiple approaches depending on client context: Mercer International Position Evaluation (IPE), point-factor systems, whole-job ranking, and hybrid approaches. The method determines grade placement, which in turn determines salary range assignment. Every evaluation is documented and defensible.
FLSA Classification Audit. We review every role against the Fair Labor Standards Act salary basis test and duties tests (Executive, Administrative, Professional, Computer Employee, Outside Sales, Highly Compensated Employee) to identify misclassification risk. A single misclassified employee can trigger back-pay liability for an entire cohort. We document the classification rationale for every role so you have an audit trail. We also flag state-specific considerations for California, New York, and other jurisdictions with stricter standards.
Title Standardization. We establish consistent titling conventions that align with your leveling framework and market survey matching requirements. This means eliminating the VP-of-everything problem, standardizing prefixes and suffixes, and creating a title matrix that maps cleanly to survey benchmark jobs.
How We Build a Job Architecture
Inventory and Assessment
We collect your current job list, organization charts, existing descriptions, and HRIS data. We assess the current state: how many unique titles exist, where duplication and overlap occur, which roles lack descriptions, and where the biggest gaps between current practice and best practice sit.
Framework Design
We design the family/sub-family taxonomy, define career levels, select and apply the evaluation methodology, and produce a complete job-to-grade mapping. Every design decision is documented with rationale.
FLSA Review
We audit every role for proper exempt/non-exempt classification, flagging misclassification risk and recommending reclassification where warranted.
Documentation and Rollout
We produce the career framework document, update or create job descriptions for key roles, build the manager communication toolkit, and deliver training materials for HR.
M&A Job Mapping
Acquisitions create job architecture chaos. Two organizations with different titling conventions, different leveling systems, different grade structures, and different FLSA interpretations need to be reconciled into a single framework.
We have direct experience integrating acquired populations into existing job architectures. Our most recent M&A integration mapped 520 employees from an acquired defense contractor into the parent company's job framework, including grade harmonization, title standardization, and pay alignment across different contractor cultures. We know where the friction points are and how to resolve them without creating unnecessary noise.
Who This Is For
- Organizations that have grown past the point where ad hoc titling and leveling works
- PE portfolio companies that need clean job architecture as part of compensation infrastructure build-out
- Companies preparing for M&A integration that need to reconcile two different job frameworks
- Companies facing pay transparency requirements and need reliable job levels for salary range postings
- Government contractors who need FLSA compliance documentation that passes regulatory scrutiny
What You Get
- Job family taxonomy with family descriptions and sub-family definitions
- Career leveling framework with level definitions, competency criteria, and management/IC track documentation
- Job-to-grade mapping for your full population with evaluation rationale
- FLSA classification audit with exemption test analysis and reclassification recommendations
- Title standardization matrix mapping current titles to new title conventions
- Manager toolkit for communicating the new framework to employees
Frequently Asked Questions
Job architecture is the structural framework that organizes all jobs in a company into families, levels, and grades. It defines how roles relate to each other, establishes career progression paths, and provides the foundation for salary structures, pay equity analysis, and workforce planning.
Most mid-market companies (200-2,000 employees) work well with 5-8 career levels per track (individual contributor and management). The total number of salary grades in the structure is typically 12-18. Fewer than 10 grades creates wide ranges that reduce pay differentiation. More than 20 creates administrative complexity without meaningful benefit.
Job evaluation determines a role's internal value relative to other roles using factors like complexity, scope, and impact. Market pricing determines a role's external value by matching it to compensation survey data. Best practice uses both: job evaluation establishes the internal hierarchy, and market pricing establishes the pay rates.
FLSA exemption requires meeting both a salary basis test and a duties test specific to the exemption category. The duties tests evaluate primary duty, discretion and independent judgment, management responsibilities, and the nature of the work. Classification must be based on actual job duties, not job titles. State-specific rules (particularly in California and New York) may impose additional requirements.
The acquiring company typically needs to map acquired employees into its existing job framework. This involves matching roles across different titling conventions, reconciling leveling systems, resolving grade and pay conflicts, and reclassifying positions where FLSA interpretations differ. A clean integration usually takes 60-90 days after close.
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