Explore the Pave job catalog
The Pave job catalog is the taxonomy that organizes every role in Market Data. When you search for compensation benchmarks, you navigate the job catalog to find the role you want to benchmark. Understanding how the catalog is structured helps you find the right match for your roles and interpret the data you see.
How the job catalog is organized
The job catalog uses a three-level hierarchy:
- Function: A broad area of work (for example, Engineering, Sales, Marketing)
- Family blend: A group of related job families within a function (for example, Software Engineering, Sales Engineering)
- Job family: A specific role type within a blend (for example, Frontend Engineer, Backend Engineer)
When you view benchmarks, you can select data at the family blend level (aggregated across all families in the blend) or drill down to an individual job family for more specific data.
Functions
The job catalog includes 16 functions. Each function contains multiple job family blends, and each blend contains one or more job families.
To see the complete catalog with every function, blend, and family, download the job catalog from Market Data (see "Download the job catalog" below).
Tracks and levels
Each job family in the catalog has associated tracks and levels that represent career progression. Tracks define the type of role, and levels indicate seniority within that track.
There are four tracks:
Executive
- E9: C-Level
- E8: Senior Vice President (SVP)
- E7: Vice President (VP)
Management
- M6: Senior Director
- M5: Director
- M4: Senior Manager
- M3: Manager
Professional (individual contributor)
- P6: Principal
- P5: Expert
- P4: Senior
- P3: Career
- P2: Developing
- P1: Entry
Support
- S3: Senior
- S2: Intermediate
- S1: Entry
Not every job family supports every track and level. For example, Software Engineering is available across Professional (P1-P6) and Manager (M3-M6) tracks, while a more specialized family like Copywriting may only be available at Professional levels. The job catalog shows which tracks and levels are available for each family.
Choosing the right level
The scope of responsibilities for a given title varies across companies. To match to the right level, review the detailed leveling guide here. The guide describes the scope, responsibilities, and expertise expected at each level, along with common job titles.
Comparing to other survey providers
Pave's leveling system maps to other common compensation survey frameworks, including Radford and Mercer/Comptryx. If your company currently uses one of these frameworks, you can use the mapping to find the equivalent Pave level.
Pave, Radford, and Mercer/Comptryx all use a similar four-track structure (Executive, Management, Professional, and Support), but the number and labeling of levels within each track differs.
<br />Executive: Pave uses three levels (E7 through E9), Radford uses six (E1 through E6), and Mercer uses three (ET1 through ET3). Pave E9 (C-Level) corresponds to the top of the Radford executive range (E5-E6) and Mercer ET1. Pave E8 (SVP) corresponds to Radford E3-E4 and Mercer ET2. Pave E7 (VP) corresponds to Radford E1-E2 and Mercer ET3.
Management: All three frameworks use M-level numbering. Pave M3 through M6 map directly to the same levels in Radford and Mercer (M3 = Manager, M4 = Senior Manager, M5 = Director, M6 = Senior Director). Radford and Mercer also include M1 and M2, which have no direct equivalent in Pave's Management track.
Professional: Pave uses P1 through P6, and Radford and Mercer use P1 through P7. Pave P6 (Principal) corresponds to Radford and Mercer P6. Each subsequent Pave level maps to the same levels in Radford and Mercer (Pave P5 corresponds to Radford P5 and to Mercer P5)
Support: Pave uses S1 through S3, while Radford uses S1 through S5 and Mercer uses S1 through S4. Pave S3 (Senior) corresponds to the highest Support levels in Radford (S5) and Mercer (S4), with each lower Pave level mapping to the correspondingly lower level in the other frameworks.
Browse and search the job catalog
In Market Data, you can find job families in two ways:
Browse the catalog menu: Open the job catalog menu to see the full hierarchy. Functions appear at the top level. Expand a function to see its family blends, then expand a blend to see individual families. Each family has a colored indicator showing whether benchmark data is available:
- A blue indicator means the family is searchable and has benchmark data available
- A gray indicator means the family is in the catalog but does not yet have sufficient data for benchmarks
Search by name or job title: Use the search bar to find a family by name (for example, "Software Engineer") or by a job title your company uses (for example, "Full Stack Developer"). Pave matches your search to the most relevant families in the catalog.
Searchable and supported families
The job catalog includes more families than Pave currently reports benchmark data for. A family's status depends on whether enough companies and employees are mapped to it to meet Pave's data accuracy standards:
- Searchable: The family has enough data to report compensation benchmarks. You can select it and view benchmark data in Market Data.
- Supported (not yet searchable): The family exists in the catalog, and Pave is actively matching employees to it, but it does not yet have enough data to meet accuracy standards. Data from these families is included in the associated family blend's aggregated benchmarks.
As more companies submit data and Pave's dataset grows, additional families become searchable.
Download the job catalog
You can download the full job catalog as an Excel file here. The download includes:
- Job catalog: The complete hierarchy of functions, family blends, and job families with descriptions and data availability status
- Job matrix: A detailed mapping of families to tracks and levels
- Historical job matches: A mapping between the current catalog and previous versions, useful if your company matched roles to an earlier version of the catalog
FAQ
What happens when I select a family blend instead of an individual family?
When you select a family blend, Market Data shows aggregated benchmark data across all families within that blend. This gives you a broader view of compensation for that group of roles. Selecting an individual family shows data specific to that one role type.
What if my role doesn't match any family in the catalog?
Search by the job title your company uses. Pave's search matches titles to the most relevant families. If you cannot find a close match, select the family blend that best represents the role's function to see aggregated data for that group.
How often does the catalog change?
Pave updates the job catalog periodically to add new families, refine descriptions, and promote supported families to searchable status as data density increases. When the catalog is updated, the Excel download includes a mapping between the previous and current versions so you can see what changed.
The Pave job catalog is the taxonomy that organizes every role in Market Data. When you search for compensation benchmarks, you navigate the job catalog to find the role you want to benchmark. Understanding how the catalog is structured helps you find the right match for your roles and interpret the data you see.