Global Payroll Tower Lead

Tata Consultancy Services; Chennai District; On-site; INR 2,400,000 - 4,200,000; Full time

Job summary

Tata Consultancy Services is looking for a Global Payroll Tower Lead to own end-to-end payroll service delivery across multiple countries, ensuring accurate and compliant payroll outcomes. You will act as the primary contact for client stakeholders and vendors, and drive governance, transformation, and continuous improvement.

Responsibilities include overseeing the payroll lifecycle, Workday PECI interfaces, and ServiceNow workflows, while maintaining strong controls and data privacy compliance

Qualifications

• Extensive experience in global or multi-country payroll operations within a complex multinational environment.
• Strong understanding of payroll processing, statutory compliance, taxation, social security, labor regulations, payments, accounting, reconciliations, and year-end activities.
• Good functional knowledge of Workday HCM and Workday PECI payroll integrations, interface controls, error management, and downstream payroll dependencies.
• Experience with global and local payroll platforms and third-party payroll service providers.
• Working knowledge of ServiceNow case, incident, request, problem, change, and knowledge-management processes.
• Demonstrated experience in client management, vendor management, governance, escalations, and executive stakeholder communication.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end multi-country payroll operations with accurate, timely, compliant delivery.
• Serve as primary delivery contact for client stakeholders, country payroll teams, and vendors.
• Govern payroll with SLAs, KPIs, risk/issue management, and action tracking.
• Oversee full payroll lifecycle including data validation, gross-to-net, approvals, and statutory payments.
• Provide oversight of Workday PECI interfaces, data mapping, and error handling.
• Maintain strong controls across data, inputs, calculations, and payroll outputs.
• Ensure compliance with country-specific payroll and data privacy requirements.
• Manage payroll vendor performance through governance, scorecards, and improvement plans.
• Utilize ServiceNow for payroll cases, incidents, requests, and change management.
• Drive transformation through standardization, automation, and self-service initiatives.
• Lead payroll transitions, onboarding, and cutover activities.
• Own critical payroll incidents with containment and root-cause resolution.
• Maintain audit-ready process documentation and risk registers.
• Coach payroll SMEs and operational teams for capacity and performance.

Skills

Global payroll

Multi-country payroll

Governance & controls

Vendor management

Process improvement

Automation

Data privacy

Stakeholder management

Analytical thinking

Tools

Workday HCM

Workday PECI

ServiceNow (SNOW)

Job description

The Global Payroll Tower Lead will own and govern end-to-end payroll service delivery across multiple countries for the Client account. The role requires strong knowledge of multi-country payroll, statutory compliance, Workday PECI integrations, payroll platforms, ServiceNow, operational controls, vendor governance, client management, and payroll transformation. The Tower Lead will ensure accurate, timely, compliant, and controlled payroll delivery while driving stakeholder confidence, service stability, continuous improvement, and measurable business outcomes.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead and govern end-to-end multi-country payroll operations, ensuring accurate, timely, compliant, and employee-focused payroll delivery.
• Act as the primary delivery contact for client stakeholders, country payroll teams, and third-party payroll vendors.
• Own payroll governance, including service reviews, leadership reporting, SLA and KPI performance, risk and issue management, action tracking, and escalation resolution.
• Oversee the complete payroll lifecycle, including input collection, data validation, gross-to-net processing, approvals, funding, bank file execution, statutory payments, accounting outputs, reconciliations, payslips, and post-payroll activities.
• Provide functional oversight of Workday PECI interfaces, including understanding of file structure, full and delta files, effective-dated changes, event processing, error handling, data mapping, interface monitoring, and reconciliation with payroll platforms.
• Ensure strong controls across upstream data, payroll inputs, calculations, expected-versus-actual variance checks, payment files, statutory remittances, general ledger outputs, access management, approvals, and evidence retention.
• Ensure compliance with country-specific payroll, tax, social security, labor, data privacy, record-retention, and statutory reporting requirements in partnership with local SMEs and vendors.
• Manage payroll vendor performance through contractual governance, scorecards, service review meetings, root-cause analysis, corrective and preventive actions, and improvement plans.
• Use ServiceNow (SNOW) for payroll cases, incidents, service requests, problem management, change management, knowledge management, and trend analysis.
• Drive transformation through process standardization, automation, control enhancement, elimination of manual activities, self-service, analytics, and continuous improvement.
• Lead payroll transitions, country onboarding, scope changes, parallel payrolls, testing, cutover, hypercare, stabilization, and knowledge-transfer activities.
• Own critical payroll incidents and escalations, ensuring timely containment, stakeholder communication, root-cause analysis, impact assessment, remediation, and sustainable preventive actions.
• Maintain audit-ready process documentation, SOPs, control evidence, approval records, risk registers, issue logs, and compliance documentation.
• Lead, coach, and develop payroll SMEs, and operational teams while ensuring adequate capacity, succession planning, and performance management.

Required Skills and Experience

• Extensive experience in global or multi-country payroll operations within a complex multinational environment.
• Strong understanding of payroll processing, statutory compliance, taxation, social security, labor regulations, payments, accounting, reconciliations, and year-end activities.
• Good functional knowledge of Workday HCM and Workday PECI payroll integrations, interface controls, error management, and downstream payroll dependencies.
• Experience with global and local payroll platforms and third-party payroll service providers.
• Working knowledge of ServiceNow (SNOW) case, incident, request, problem, change, and knowledge-management processes.
• Demonstrated experience in client management, vendor management, governance, escalations, and executive stakeholder communication.
• Strong understanding of payroll control frameworks, risk assessment, segregation of duties, maker-checker controls, audit readiness, and data privacy.
• Proven experience in payroll transformation, process improvement, automation, standardization, and benefit realization.
• Excellent verbal and written communication, presentation, facilitation, negotiation, and influencing skills.
• Strong analytical ability, attention to detail, decision-making, and structured problem-solving skills.