Payroll Specialist

Overview

Senior UK-focused Payroll Specialist within American Express’ Colleague Experience Group. You will own key UK payroll activities, ensuring accurate, compliant data and timely delivery. You will perform detailed reconciliations, manage Modified Payroll, and collaborate with internal and external partners to uphold controls and governance. You will drive data-driven improvements and support year-end activities in a fast-paced environment. This is a meaningful role shaping payroll accuracy and colleague experience at scale.

Responsibilities

• Own key activities across the UK payroll cycle for accurate, timely delivery
• Process, review and validate complex UK payroll data (salary changes, absences, benefits, variable pay)
• Conduct detailed payroll reconciliations, validations and variance analysis to identify and resolve discrepancies
• Manage UK payroll returns, reporting and data requirements for accurate submissions
• Support Modified Payroll activities with appropriate controls and technical knowledge
• Apply UK payroll legislation knowledge to payroll decisions and processing
• Analyse large payroll datasets to identify trends, risks and improvement opportunities
• Coordinate payroll issues to resolution with strong quality checks and controls
• Collaborate with internal teams and external partners to ensure seamless payroll operations
• Maintain payroll SOPs, controls, and supporting documentation
• Support tax filings, statutory reporting and year-end activities
• Manage external vendor relationships to meet SLAs and quality standards
• Deliver accurate payroll governance reports and analytics for month-end and year-end cycles
• Ensure compliance with legislation, policies, risk controls, and audit standards
• Proactively identify opportunities to simplify processes and increase automation
• Handle multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment
• Provide high-quality service to resolve colleague payroll queries while ensuring compliance

Key requirements

• Experienced hands-on UK payroll experience
• Strong knowledge of UK payroll legislation, PAYE, National Insurance, statutory payments
• Experience managing UK payroll returns, statutory reporting and data
• Experience with Modified Payroll is highly desirable
• Strong analytical and data management skills with large datasets
• Ability to review and validate own work independently
• Autonomy and sound judgement in decision making
• Strong problem-solving and troubleshooting skills
• Knowledge of payroll controls, compliance and risk management
• Stakeholder management and relationship-building with internal and external partners
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Customer service mindset with payroll controls and compliance
• Interest in data, analytics and using data to improve accuracy and processes
• Eligibility to work in the UK without sponsorship

• attention to detail
• stakeholder management
• problem-solving
• UK payroll processing
• PAYE
• National Insurance

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