Payroll & Systems Manager

Samuels Donegan; City of Melbourne; On-site; AUD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Samuels Donegan is seeking a Payroll & Systems Manager to own the technology, configuration and controls behind its payroll function, with a bias toward improving behind-the-scenes processes.

This role is highly autonomous, involves testing changes in sandbox environments, troubleshooting, system upgrades and automation, and collaborating with Finance, People & Culture, Operations and IT.

Qualifications

• Strong payroll systems experience.
• Time & Attendance knowledge.
• Configuration, testing and troubleshooting capability.
• Modern Award and EBA interpretation skills.
• Strong Australian payroll compliance knowledge.
• Advanced Excel skills.
• Previous end‑to‑end payroll experience.
• Confidence working autonomously.
• Experience with iChris and UKG would be brilliant, but it’s not essential.

Responsibilities

• Payroll system administration and configuration.
• T&A rules, pay codes and work rules.
• Testing changes in sandbox environments.
• Troubleshooting system and integration issues.
• System upgrades and enhancements.
• Data integrity and security.
• Automation and process improvement.
• Payroll reconciliations, audits and controls.
• Month-end and year-end requirements.

Skills

Payroll systems

Time & Attendance

Configuration testing

Advanced Excel

Tools

iChris

UKG

Job description

We’re partnering with an established Australian business looking for a Payroll & Systems Manager to take ownership of the technology, configuration and controls sitting behind its payroll function.

This one is for the payroll people who secretly enjoy breaking things in the test environment just to figure out how to make them better.

Despite the title, running payroll is only a small part of the week. The real opportunity is getting under the hood of the systems, testing changes, troubleshooting issues and finding smarter ways of doing things.

Who are you?

You probably started your career in traditional payroll and gradually realised your favourite part was figuring out how everything works behind the scenes.

You’re curious, technically minded and naturally look beyond the immediate problem. If something goes wrong, you don’t just fix it. You want to understand why it happened and how to stop it happening again.

You’re also comfortable operating autonomously and translating technical payroll problems into practical advice for stakeholders.

Day to day

You’ll become the internal go‑to across the organisation’s payroll and Time & Attendance environment, with plenty of ownership across:

• Payroll system administration and configuration
• T&A rules, pay codes and work rules
• Testing changes in sandbox environments
• Troubleshooting system and integration issues
• System upgrades and enhancements
• Data integrity and security
• Automation and process improvement
• Payroll reconciliations, audits and controls
• Month‑end and year‑end requirements

You’ll still retain oversight of the monthly payroll, but the actual processing takes less than one full day each month.

You’ll also report directly to the Group CFO, partnering across Finance, People & Culture, Operations and IT.

What’s in your toolkit?

You know payroll deeply enough to understand how Awards, EBAs and compliance requirements translate into system rules and payroll outcomes.

Ideally, you’ll bring:

• Strong payroll systems experience
• Time & Attendance knowledge
• Configuration, testing and troubleshooting capability
• Modern Award and EBA interpretation skills
• Strong Australian payroll compliance knowledge
• Advanced Excel skills
• Previous end‑to‑end payroll experience
• Confidence working autonomously
• Experience with iChris and UKG would be brilliant, but it’s not essential. Strong transferable payroll systems experience is absolutely welcome.

What’s in it for you?

This level of technical payroll ownership without needing to work five days a week doesn’t come around often.

• 0.6-0.8 FTE
• Hybrid flexibility
• Systems‑heavy rather than processing‑heavy
• Genuine autonomy and SME ownership
• Direct exposure to senior leadership
• Plenty of optimisation and automation work

The Bottom Line

If your favourite payroll questions are “Why is the system doing that?” and “How can we make this work better?”, this one has your name all over it. It’s technical, autonomous and improvement-focused, with enough payroll to keep you connected to the function, but nowhere near enough to have you stuck processing all week.