Senior Payroll Specialist

Gravita; London; Hybrid; GBP 40,000 - 60,000; Full time

Job summary

Gravita, a tech-enabled accounting firm, is seeking a Senior Payroll Specialist in London. This role entails complete ownership of payroll operations, ensuring compliance while enhancing processes. The ideal candidate will have proven payroll management experience and strong knowledge of UK legislation, contributing to the firm's growth and efficiency.

Qualifications

• Proven experience managing end-to-end payroll.
• Strong understanding of UK payroll legislation.
• Experience with payroll systems (e.g. Pay Circle).

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end payroll process across multiple entities.
• Liaise with HMRC to ensure compliance.
• Manage pension administration and benefit scheme administration.

Skills

Attention to detail

Process management

Excel

Tools

Payroll systems

HR platforms

Job description

Social network you want to login/join with:

We’re Gravita: the accountants fuelling ambitious businesses. We’re a full service, tech-enabled firm, working with entrepreneurs and businesses to help them achieve their goals, and make an impact in the world.

We’re growing fast and are bringing like-minded advisors together to form a full-service tech-enabled accounting partner for thousands of SMEs. Our team use their incredible expertise alongside intuitive technology to help businesses and entrepreneurs plan better and grow faster.

We’re Gravita: the accountants fuelling ambitious businesses. We’re a full service, tech-enabled firm, working with entrepreneurs and businesses to help them achieve their goals, and make an impact in the world.

We’re growing fast and are bringing like-minded advisors together to form a full-service tech-enabled accounting partner for thousands of SMEs. Our team use their incredible expertise alongside intuitive technology to help businesses and entrepreneurs plan better and grow faster.

Our mission is to become the UK’s leading tech-enabled accounting firm for SMEs. We have ambitious goals and our high-calibre team work hard to achieve them. We are one team with one agenda, working collaboratively in a respectful environment to deliver a great service to our clients. So if you join us, you’ll not only be working on exciting client challenges, you’ll also be helping us shape the future of accounting.

The Role

We’re looking for an experienced and detail-oriented Senior Payroll Specialist to take full ownership of our payroll operations. This role is critical to ensuring our people are paid accurately and on time, while maintaining compliance, supporting pension administration, and helping us scale our processes as we grow.

This is a standalone role, so you’ll need to be comfortable managing the entire payroll cycle independently while driving continuous improvement, especially in areas like process controls, data integrity, and reporting accuracy.

You’ll lead the end-to-end payroll process and have the opportunity to influence and improve how we run payroll, pensions, and benefits at scale. As we grow, there’s potential for the right person to build and manage a small payroll and benefits team and take on ownership of our flexible benefits offering.

Key Responsibilities:

Payroll Operations

• Own the end-to-end payroll process across multiple entities and pay cycles
• Prepare, reconcile and submit monthly payroll data
• Manage statutory payments, deductions, and year-end processes (P60s, P11Ds, etc.)
• Liaise with HMRC to ensure all compliance requirements are met
• Work closely with Finance to support monthly reporting and audit requirements

Pensions & Benefits

• Manage pension administration, auto-enrolment, and compliance
• Support benefit scheme administration (private medical, cycle to work, EAP, etc.)
• Liaise with providers and brokers to ensure smooth renewals and employee onboarding
• Provide accurate benefit reporting and support employee queries

Compliance & Reporting

• Ensure full compliance with HMRC legislation, payroll audits, and statutory filings
• Maintain accurate payroll and benefits records
• Produce reports and insights for internal stakeholders and auditors
• Continuously review and improve controls and documentation
• Work with the People Ops and Finance teams to optimise payroll systems and processes (e.g. HiBob)
• Contribute to cross-functional projects to enhance operational efficiency
• Identify and implement improvements to employee experience around pay and benefits

Qualifications, Knowledge & Experience:

• Proven experience managing end-to-end payroll in a growing business
• Strong understanding of UK payroll legislation and pension compliance
• Excellent attention to detail and ability to manage sensitive data confidentially
• Experience with payroll systems (e.g. Pay Circle, or similar) and HR platforms (e.g. HiBob)
• Strong Excel and reporting skills
• A proactive, process-minded professional who thrives in a fast-moving environment
• Bonus: Experience managing benefits programmes or interest in stepping into this space

The Opportunity:

• Shape and lead the future payroll and benefits function
• Take ownership of our flexible benefits offering
• Build and manage a team as teh business expands further

Your Career with Gravita:

When you join Gravita, we’ll support you on your own growth journey. We want to be the place you learn, grow and unlock your true potential.

We’ll work with you to build a progression plan to outline how you’ll grow at our company and everything we’ll do to help you get there. We’re also passionate about learning and development, to help you focus on your future.

The Nitty Gritty

• Our standard working week is a 37.5-hour week on a hybrid basis (with up to 50% of your time across the month home based and the other 50% office based)
• Core working hours are 10am - 4pm Monday to Friday
• Flexible working and happy employees are at the top of our list here at Gravita and we have been working hard to support our teams through the fast-paced changes.
• It's a busy, fast-paced environment here at Gravita. Feel free to check out our social media channels (Instagram, X, LinkedIn and Glassdoor).