Employee Spotlight: Chi-Kai Chien, VP of Engineering

As Pave continues to grow our leadership team, we’re excited to share another recent addition: Chi-Kai Chien has joined Pave as our VP of Engineering! His impressive career spans nearly every aspect of the technology sector, from hardware to software, B2C to B2B, and large corporations to small startups. With previous roles at companies like NVIDIA, Cisco, and Calm, Chi-Kai brings a wealth of knowledge and leadership experience to Pave. 

Chi-Kai oversees our engineering function, which works diligently to ensure every compensation leader has the tools they need to make critical pay decisions with confidence. Keep reading to learn more about Chi-Kai, his thoughts on the state of compensation, and his vision for engineering at Pave.

What was the opportunity you saw in Pave?

When I worked at Calm, we were Pave customers, so I had some firsthand experience with the platform. I’ll admit, I didn’t think compensation software was very interesting at first. However, after I was introduced to Pave, I quickly found there are some very big problems in this space that require creative solutions. Underneath the hood of Pave’s product, there are so many interesting challenges around data, analysis, and user experience that I’m excited to work on.

Early in my career, I always chose roles where I could learn the most. That has slowly changed over time, and now I prioritize who I get to be on a journey with and where I can make the most impact. And I saw that at Pave. The people here are smart, they’re authentically nice, and they work really hard to get things done in the best way possible for customers.

What do you find most exciting about the compensation space?

If you look inside the average company, you’ll find that many HR processes, and especially compensation workflows, are still executed by hand in spreadsheets. It’s a bit shocking, frankly. At Pave, we get to take these cumbersome, manual processes and build incredible software that measurably helps people and businesses. I’m excited by the scale of what we can do, what we can deliver, and who we can serve.  

It’s also exciting to be at a company with clear and growing market validation. So many well-known companies use Pave, and we’re only just getting started. The market for compensation software is huge—Pave can solve problems for so many more companies. For example, nearly every company in the world could benefit from market pricing software, especially when you consider the alternatives of spreadsheets or disjointed systems. 

Overall, Pave is well-positioned to change how HR and Total Rewards leaders help their companies hire and retain employees. There’s a massive opportunity for us to enable compensation professionals to be strategic leaders at their companies. With our tools, they can become partners with the executive team to provide trusted guidance on managing the huge budget item of human capital. 

What’s your vision for engineering at Pave?

First and foremost, we are problem solvers. Our engineering team is focused on developing intuitive, easy to use software rooted in solving customer pain points. Importantly, we have a great partnership with our go-to-market team, who really understands our customers and their needs. With that shared context, we can unlock the creative ingenuity of our amazing team to deliver ever-increasing value.

How are you thinking about AI at Pave?

At the end of the day, AI is a tool. As I noted above, I firmly believe we should always lead with customer use cases in mind and deeply understand the problems we're trying to solve. Classic ML is a really great solution for some things, and Gen AI is really good for other things—we should be applying those methods in our products where it makes the most sense. We’re already using classic ML techniques and LLMs across our compensation dataset and in our job matching, and with features like Calculated Benchmarks.

There’s a lot more we can do, but again, our focus is on tackling real customer pain points, not chasing hype. It’s also important to remember how nuanced and personal compensation is. Balancing internal and external information sets with individual and business goals to make pay decisions is why compensation is both art and science. Hence, we need to approach AI-generated recommendations with great care.  

What type of engineering culture are you hoping to build?

I want to foster agency. We have plenty of people with great ideas, but for one reason or another, things can get in the way of making those ideas a reality. Clearly articulated problems and clean solutions need the space and time to gain mindshare. Fostering that climate breeds innovation. I’ve seen seeds of that at Pave, and I’m trying to make sure agency is celebrated and nurtured.

My goal is to elevate everyone on this team. The best leaders I know are the ones who give all the credit to their team. That's really important to me. Nothing makes me happier than seeing someone working really hard and working smart to bring amazing solutions to life—and then receiving due recognition.

‍Interested in joining the Pave team? Check out our open roles.