Manager – Payroll

Overview

In this role you will lead payroll and benefits operations across 13+ EMEA countries, ensuring accurate processing and regulatory compliance. You will manage a dispersed team and drive the EMEA Payroll Consolidation initiative to a single global platform. You partner with HR, Finance, Legal, and external vendors to standardize processes, strengthen controls, and enable scalable growth. The position offers impact through governance, reporting improvements, and cross-functional collaboration in a multinational setting.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end payroll processing across 13+ EMEA countries with accuracy and timeliness
• Maintain payroll governance, controls, and audit readiness across jurisdictions
• Ensure compliance with country-specific payroll/tax/employment regulations
• Partner with Finance on payroll accounting, reconciliations, accruals, and year-end activities
• Establish payroll KPIs, SLAs, and service delivery metrics
• Drive standardization and operational efficiency across regional payroll activities
• Oversee regional benefits programs including health, retirement, risk, wellbeing
• Manage renewals, enrollments, communications, and vendor relationships
• Support integration of acquired entities into payroll/benefits programs
• Lead EMEA Payroll Consolidation project, including data validation, testing, migration, and go-live
• Drive change management, training, and adoption of new processes and technology
• Manage risks, issues, dependencies, and milestone delivery for implementations
• Lead, coach, and develop onsite and remote payroll/benefits teams
• Foster a high-performance, customer-focused culture and develop performance plans
• Manage relationships with payroll providers, brokers, insurers, and other vendors
• Negotiate SLAs and drive vendor performance, compliance, and improvement
• Provide payroll/benefits expertise for strategic HR initiatives, audits, and transformations
• Ensure GDPR, local legislation, and internal controls are adhered to
• Monitor legislation and assess operational impacts
• Lead internal and external audits related to payroll and benefits
• Establish governance processes for accuracy, confidentiality, and compliance
• Qualifications: Required – 8+ years multi-country EMEA payroll/benefits experience; 3+ years leading dispersed teams; experience with outsourced providers; strong analytics, project, and stakeholder skills
• Preferred – Oracle HCM and global payroll experience; CloudPay or similar; professional certifications; multinational financial services experience
• In office 4 days per week required

Key requirements

• 8+ years of progressive payroll and/or benefits experience with multi-country EMEA responsibility
• 3+ years of people leadership with geographically dispersed teams
• Experience with outsourced payroll providers and benefit vendors
• Strong understanding of payroll compliance, taxation, and employment regulations across EMEA
• Experience supporting system implementations, payroll transformations, or process optimization
• Advanced analytical, project management, and stakeholder management skills

• leadership
• collaboration
• communication
• Oracle HCM
• global payroll solutions (e.g., CloudPay)
• data validation and testing

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