Senior People Operations & Payroll Expert

Wordsmith AI Ltd; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Wordsmith, based in London, is seeking a senior People Operations professional to own the operational backbone of payroll, mobility, PEOs, equity administration, HRIS, and related systems. This role focuses on clean operations with auditability, not a junior administration post.

You will implement the leadership's pay philosophy, salary bands, and equity strategy, ensuring timely, compliant execution and clear audit trails.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of People Operations or HR generalist experience in a scaling tech business.
• Experience building and running multi-country people processes from the ground up.
• Confidence owning payroll controls, global mobility operations and equity administration across multiple jurisdictions.
• Strong data literacy and HRIS/payroll systems experience, with a bias toward automation.
• Clear written communicator with audit-ready records

Responsibilities

• Own payroll controls and monthly validation across UK payroll, PEOs, and other employment models, with reconciliation to Finance.
• Run visa and mobility operations end-to-end: sponsorships, relocations, compliance, right-to-work controls.
• Manage commission review, approvals, exceptions, and payment accuracy; reconcile data between sales, Finance and payroll.
• Own equity grant administration: approvals, vesting, leaver events, exercises, cap table reconciliation, communications.
• Build and improve people workflows in Humans, Ashby and connected systems, using automation to remove manual steps.
• Own onboarding, probation, employment changes, transfers, parental leave, and offboarding end-to-end across People, IT, Finance and hiring managers

Skills

Payroll

Mobility

HRIS

Equity admin

Automation

Documentation

Tools

Humans

Ashby

Job description

Wordsmith, based in London, is seeking a senior People Operations professional to own the operational backbone of payroll, mobility, PEOs, equity administration, HRIS, and related systems. This role focuses on clean operations with auditability, not a junior administration post.

You will implement the leadership's pay philosophy, salary bands, and equity strategy, ensuring timely, compliant execution and clear audit trails.