Academic staff performance has been plagued with several challenges which has remained a critical concern in many developing countries, especially within private universities where limited resources has created pressures in academic activities. The study explores the effect of job satisfaction on relationship between compensation practices (salary and healthcare benefits) and academic staff performance in selected private universities in Abuja. The study adopted quantitative research, data were collected from 351 academic staff via structured questionnaire. Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze the data, by accessing the measurement reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity and the structural connections between the variables. The results shows that job satisfaction has a strong significant positive effect on academic staff performance ( β= 0.776, p < 0.000), revealing it as a core driver of performance. Salary also has significant effect on job satisfaction (β= 0.255, p < 0.000), but however has a negative effect on academic staff performance (β= -0.089, p = 0.008), suggesting that salary may bring about performance pressures. On the other hand, healthcare benefits has significant and positive effect on academic staff performance (β= 0.221, p < 0.000) but show no significant effect on job satisfaction (β= 0.021, p = 0.357).the findings show that while good salary structures may help improve the job satisfaction of academic staff, adequate healthcare provisions will have a more direct influence on their performance outcomes. The study therefore concludes that management of universities should adopt balanced compensation strategies that enhance the job satisfaction and performance of academic staff. The study contributes to the human resource management literature in higher education and offers actionable recommendations to improve institutional performance