Senior Payroll Specialist

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Senior Payroll Specialist based in Canada. The Senior Payroll Specialist will oversee end-to-end payroll operations across multiple international entities, ensuring accurate, timely, and compliant employee compensation. This role covers payroll activities across the UK, Ireland, Germany, Singapore, Japan, and Australia, as well as employees engaged through an employer-of-record provider. The successful candidate will bring strong UK payroll expertise, sound knowledge of international payroll compliance, and a proactive approach to reconciliation and risk management. Working closely with Finance, People Experience, Legal, and external payroll partners, this individual will help maintain reliable processes and a positive employee experience. The role also offers an opportunity to contribute to a major payroll transformation, including system migration, testing, and implementation. This is an ideal opportunity for an analytical and detail-oriented professional who enjoys solving complex payroll challenges and improving processes in a global, remote-friendly environment. Accountabilities - Manage end-to-end payroll processing for six international entities across the UK, Ireland, Germany, Singapore, Japan, and Australia, as well as employees managed through employer-of-record arrangements. - Ensure payroll is processed accurately and on schedule for each payroll cycle, maintaining data integrity and consistent delivery across jurisdictions. - Monitor payroll compliance across supported countries, including payroll taxes, statutory requirements, regulatory filings, year-end processes, and changes in local legislation. - Perform payroll reconciliations, variance analysis, and control checks, investigating discrepancies and resolving exceptions before payroll is finalized.

- Maintain effective payroll controls and proactively identify potential risks, escalating complex or high-impact issues with clear recommendations and supporting analysis. - Manage relationships with external payroll providers and service partners, coordinating issue resolution and monitoring service quality. - Support payroll audits, statutory reporting, compliance activities, and year-end requirements across the relevant jurisdictions. - Collaborate with Finance, People Experience, and Legal to resolve complex payroll matters and support a reliable, positive employee experience. - Identify and implement opportunities to improve payroll processes, reporting, controls, and workflows, including automation and AI-enabled tools to reduce manual work. - Partner with Finance on the ongoing payroll transformation and transition to Rippling, contributing to process redesign, data migration, configuration validation, parallel testing, user acceptance testing (UAT), and implementation. - Support continuous improvement initiatives that strengthen payroll accuracy, operational efficiency, scalability, and reporting quality. Requirements: - At least 3 years of hands-on UK payroll experience, ideally combined with experience managing multi-entity or global payroll operations. - Strong understanding of payroll compliance, statutory requirements, payroll reconciliations, internal controls, and payroll reporting. - Experience working with payroll platforms and employer-of-record providers; familiarity with Deel, ADP Workforce Now, ADP Celergo, and/or Rippling is an asset. - Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to investigate discrepancies independently, identify root causes, and implement effective solutions. - Excellent organizational skills and attention to detail, with the ability to manage multiple payroll cycles, competing priorities, and strict deadlines.