Senior Workday Payroll Leader — Remote (UK)

Cognizant; England; Remote; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Cognizant in the United Kingdom seeks a Workday Payroll Senior Principal Consultant to lead design, delivery, and success of Workday Payroll implementations. You will advise clients and project teams, guide transformation, and promote leading practices while ensuring alignment with business objectives.

The role combines deep payroll expertise with delivery leadership, pre-sales support, and people development.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience.
• Active Workday Payroll Certification preferred.
• 5+ years of Workday implementation experience, incl. multiple end-to-end deployments.
• Proven experience leading Workday Payroll workstreams on medium to large implementations.
• Eligible for UK security clearance (SC) and UK residency for the last five years.
• Willing to travel on-site as needed.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a senior Workday Payroll subject matter expert, guiding payroll strategy and operations.
• Lead client workshops and design discussions to define scalable Workday Payroll solutions.
• Own solution design and oversee configuration, testing, deployment, and post-go-live activities.
• Act as the functional lead for large payroll implementations, managing decisions and risks.
• Mentor consultants and contribute to business development and knowledge sharing.
• Support testing, payroll parallel runs, cutover, deployment, and hypercare.
• Collaborate with HCM, Benefits, Time Tracking, Integrations, Reporting, and other teams to deliver integrated solutions.
• Contribute to practice development through training and asset creation.

Skills

Workday Payroll

Delivery leadership

Stakeholder management

Communication skills

Pre-sales support

Mentoring

Client workshops

Executive engagement

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

Workday

Job description

Cognizant in the United Kingdom seeks a Workday Payroll Senior Principal Consultant to lead design, delivery, and success of Workday Payroll implementations. You will advise clients and project teams, guide transformation, and promote leading practices while ensuring alignment with business objectives.

The role combines deep payroll expertise with delivery leadership, pre-sales support, and people development.