Senior Director, Global Payroll

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States.

📋 Description

• Develop and implement the global payroll strategy, ensuring alignment of payroll operations with the objectives of HR, Finance, Accounting, Treasury, Tax, and Legal.

• Lead, mentor, and cultivate a globally distributed payroll team, focusing on efficient workload distribution, cross-training, succession planning, and maintaining operational continuity.

• Act as the primary escalation point for payroll-related risks, compliance issues, and operational challenges across the organization.

• Supervise payroll processing across all countries, ensuring precision, punctuality, compliance, and an enhanced employee experience.

• Ensure adherence to global payroll regulations, including tax legislation, labor standards, statutory reporting, social security responsibilities, and payroll practices specific to each country.

• Foster relationships with payroll vendors, employer-of-record (EOR) providers, government entities, and local payroll partners.

• Create and sustain a controlled global payroll operating model that encompasses payroll calendars, approval processes, service-level expectations, escalation procedures, and documentation processes.

• Coordinate payroll funding, cash management, payment authorizations, and release timelines with Treasury while guaranteeing precise reconciliation of payroll outputs.

• Collaborate with Accounting on payroll journal entries, accruals, reconciliations, closure activities, and general ledger mapping.

• Uphold robust payroll governance and SOX-compliant internal controls, including audit preparedness, duty segregation, access assessments, change management, and documentation preservation.

• Spearhead payroll technology projects, which include system implementations, upgrades, integrations, vendor transitions, and payroll transformation initiatives.

• Push for process automation, standardization, and continuous improvement efforts aimed at enhancing efficiency, scalability, and accuracy.

• Collaborate with HR, HRIS, Finance, Legal, Tax, Treasury, and business leaders to facilitate organizational growth, mergers and acquisitions, workforce expansion, and onboarding in new countries.

• Provide payroll reporting, analytics, and workforce insights to aid in budgeting, forecasting, compensation planning, and executive decision-making.

• Set and track payroll performance metrics, identify recurring issues, and implement corrective actions based on root causes.

⛳️ Requirements

• 15+ years of advancing payroll experience, with a minimum of 5 years in a global or multi-country payroll leadership position.

• Proven experience in managing payroll operations across more than 10 countries across various regions, including the Americas, EMEA, and APAC.

• Established leadership experience in managing and developing distributed payroll teams and influencing cross-functional stakeholders.

• Extensive knowledge of international payroll regulations, statutory compliance requirements, tax responsibilities, social security programs, and country-specific payroll practices.

• Strong grasp of payroll governance, SOX controls, audit readiness, variance analysis, access management, documentation retention, and the segregation of duties.

• Experience in coordinating payroll funding, payment approvals, treasury processes, and payroll accounting activities.

• Proven success in leading payroll system implementations, vendor transitions, parallel testing, and process transformation projects.

• Advanced analytical and problem-solving skills, including expertise in payroll data analysis and large-scale payroll reconciliations.

• Outstanding communication, stakeholder management, documentation, and escalation management abilities.

• Strategic mindset capable of balancing operational excellence, compliance, risk management, and continuous improvement.

• Ability to navigate through ambiguity, establish scalable processes, and foster accountability across global teams.

• Meticulous attention to detail, strong business acumen, and a commitment to confidentiality and data integrity.

🏝️ Benefits

• Equal employment opportunity regardless of race, religion, age, ancestry, gender, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, citizenship status, physical or mental disability, veteran status, marital status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.