Payroll Compliance Lead
The Payroll Compliance Lead is the central compliance authority for multi-country payroll operations. This technical supervisor and individual contributor role has no direct people-management responsibility. It monitors statutory, client, internal-control and governance requirements; investigates issues; coordinates remediation; supports audits and regulatory change; and provides risk-based guidance to operational and client stakeholders.
Key Responsibilities:
Compliance oversight and risk management
- Monitor payroll processes, outputs and controls across countries to identify compliance risks, exceptions, trends and control failures;
- Maintain compliance risk and issue logs, remediation tracking and clear governance reporting;
- Recommend improvements to controls, monitoring and governance to reduce recurring risk.
Issue investigation and remediation
- Lead investigations into compliance incidents, payroll errors, audit findings and statutory concerns;
- Perform structured root cause analysis covering process, system, operational and governance factors;
- Coordinate corrective and preventive actions, track delivery to completion and escalate material or unresolved risks;
- Maintain clear records of findings, decisions, risks and actions.
Regulatory change, audit and controls
- Monitor relevant payroll, tax, social security, labor and statutory changes and assess operational impacts;
- Partner with Country Leads, SMEs and Compliance stakeholders to implement changes and confirm readiness before go-live;
- Support internal, external, client and statutory audits, including evidence coordination and remediation of findings.
- Monitor adherence to payroll controls and recommend enhancements to the control framework.
Stakeholder collaboration and continuous improvement
- Provide technical guidance to Country Leads, Team Leads, SMEs, Payroll Processors, Compliance, HR, Tax and client stakeholders;
- Facilitate alignment on compliance priorities and remediation plans while minimizing disruption to payroll delivery;
- Promote knowledge sharing, standardized practices, preventive controls, automation and improved compliance reporting;
- Provide leadership with concise updates and data-driven insights on risks, remediation and emerging concerns.
Preferred Experience and Capabilities:
- Strong experience in global or multi-country payroll operations and payroll compliance;
- Solid knowledge of statutory payroll, tax, social security, labor requirements and payroll governance;
- Experience with incident investigation, root cause analysis, audits, control frameworks and risk monitoring;
- Strong stakeholder management, investigative and written communication skills;
- Experience with ECP/SAP payroll environments is preferred.
Success Measures
- Timely identification, escalation and mitigation of payroll compliance risks;
- Effective resolution of incidents, audit findings and corrective actions, with fewer recurring errors;
- Successful implementation of regulatory changes without compliance breaches;
- Improved adherence to payroll controls, reporting quality and compliance maturity;
- Effective collaboration across payroll, compliance, tax, HR and client stakeholders.
