Senior Payroll Team Lead — High-Volume UAE Outsourcing

Terracotta Outsourcing; Abu Dhabi; On-site; AED 167,000 - 312,000; Full time

Job summary

Terracotta Outsourcing in Abu Dhabi is seeking an experienced Payroll Team Lead to manage end-to-end UAE payroll operations for a diverse, high-volume workforce, ensure compliance with UAE Labour Law and WPS, and drive accuracy in onboarding and billing.

You will supervise a small team, optimize payroll processes, collaborate with Finance and Legal, and challenge system outputs to improve accuracy and client satisfaction.

Qualifications

• 4–8 years of UAE payroll experience within staffing, outsourcing, EOR/PEO, manpower supply, workforce solutions, or shared services environments.
• Minimum 2 years of team leadership or supervisory experience leading at least 2-3 members.
• Experience handling both white collar & blue collar payroll books.
• Proven experience managing high-volume payrolls across multiple clients, entities, and workforce categories.
• Not limited to HRMS execution (SAP/Oracle/D365 etc. is secondary).
• Must be able to challenge system outputs, not just process them.
• Must understand how payroll decisions impact finance, billing, and compliance simultaneously.

Responsibilities

• Lead payroll & compliance operations across UAE clients and onboarding activities.
• Interpret payroll as a financial model, including cost allocation and P&L impact.
• Ensure payroll outputs align with client contracts, agreements, and billing accruals.
• Validate and challenge system outputs rather than only processing transactions.
• Collaborate with Finance, Operations and Legal teams on payroll design and controls; oversee data integrity.

Skills

Payroll processing

UAE Labour Law

Excel advanced

Team leadership

Client management

WPS/SIF

Tools

SAP

Oracle

D365

Job description

Terracotta Outsourcing in Abu Dhabi is seeking an experienced Payroll Team Lead to manage end-to-end UAE payroll operations for a diverse, high-volume workforce, ensure compliance with UAE Labour Law and WPS, and drive accuracy in onboarding and billing.

You will supervise a small team, optimize payroll processes, collaborate with Finance and Legal, and challenge system outputs to improve accuracy and client satisfaction.