diff --git a/tig-benchmarker/master/master/submissions_manager.py b/tig-benchmarker/master/master/submissions_manager.py
index 3130390f..e941e560 100644
--- a/tig-benchmarker/master/master/submissions_manager.py
+++ b/tig-benchmarker/master/master/submissions_manager.py
@@ -53,7 +53,7 @@ def _post(self, submission_type: str, req: Union[SubmitPrecommitRequest, SubmitB
                 'Content-Encoding': 'br',
                 'Accept-Encoding': 'br',
             })
-            data = brotli.compress(data)
+            data = brotli.compress(data.encode())
         resp = requests.post(f"{api_url}/submit-{submission_type}", data=data, headers=headers)
         if resp.status_code == 200:
             logger.info(f"submitted {submission_type} successfully")