Workday Payroll Senior Principal Consultant

Company: Cognizant
Apply for the Workday Payroll Senior Principal Consultant
Location: London
Job Description:

Overview

In this role you guide the design, delivery, and success of Workday Payroll implementations for clients, acting as a trusted advisor to project teams. You combine deep payroll expertise with delivery leadership, pre-sales support, and people development to drive transformation. You lead complex solution discussions, oversee configurations and testing, and mentor consultants while contributing to practice growth. You work closely with cross-functional teams to deliver integrated payroll solutions and stay current on product trends. This position offers remote work in the UK and opportunities to shape the Workday payroll practice.

Pay / Benefits

  • remote-friendly
  • learning opportunities
  • global opportunities
  • affinity groups
  • entrepreneurial environment
  • community outreach

Responsibilities

  • Serve as a senior Workday Payroll subject matter expert guiding strategy, operations, and best practices
  • Lead client workshops, discovery sessions, and design discussions to define scalable payroll solutions
  • Own solution design and oversight across configuration, testing, deployment, and post-go-live activities
  • Act as the functional lead for medium to large Workday Payroll implementations, managing decisions, risks and dependencies
  • Advise on payroll processes, compliance, controls, and transformation initiatives
  • Partner with HCM, Benefits, Time Tracking, Absence, Integrations, Reporting, Security, Change Management, and Project Management teams
  • Collaborate with integration teams to support payroll provider and third-party interfaces
  • Support testing, parallel runs, cutover, deployment, and hypercare throughout the project lifecycle
  • Mentor and coach consultants, providing quality reviews and functional leadership
  • Support business development activities including estimations, proposals, demonstrations, and presentations
  • Contribute to practice development through methodology improvements, training, asset creation, and knowledge sharing
  • Maintain expertise in Workday Payroll functionality, legislative updates, industry trends, and product innovations

Key requirements

  • Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience
  • Active Workday Payroll Certification preferred
  • 5+ years of Workday implementation experience with multiple end-to-end deployments
  • Proven experience leading Workday Payroll workstreams on medium to large implementations
  • Deep functional expertise in payroll processes, operations, compliance, earnings and deductions, payroll accounting, and payroll integrations
  • Experience gathering requirements, facilitating workshops, solution design, configuration, testing, parallel runs, and deployment
  • Experience supporting pre-sales activities including estimations, proposals, and solution presentations
  • Strong leadership, mentoring, stakeholder management, and consulting skills
  • Excellent communication and presentation skills with executive-level stakeholders
  • Ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced consulting environment
  • Eligible for UK clearance and legally entitled to work in the UK
  • Minimal travel required but willing to travel on-site as needed
  • leadership
  • stakeholder management
  • communication
  • Workday Payroll
  • payroll processes and compliance
  • earnings and deductions

…

Posted: September 30th, 2026