Payroll Supervisor, APAC

Currie & Brown; Kuala Lumpur; On-site; MYR 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Currie & Brown is seeking a senior APAC payroll leader to oversee governance, processing oversight, quality control, compliance, vendor coordination and continuous improvement of payroll operations across our Asia Pacific businesses.

The role requires strong multi-country payroll experience, stakeholder management, and attention to detail to ensure accurate, on-time payroll processing in a complex in-house environment. Collaboration with finance, HR, and external advisors is essential.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of progressive payroll experience, including regional or multi-country leadership.
• Strong knowledge of payroll controls, tax, statutory deductions, and reporting obligations.
• Experience reviewing outputs, reconciliations, audits, and vendor submissions.
• Experience managing payroll vendors and in-country providers.
• Advanced Excel, data reconciliation, and payroll analytics skills.
• Experience with HRIS implementations or system enhancements is advantageous.
• Excellent written and spoken English; additional regional language skills are a plus.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end payroll operations across APAC, including regular, off-cycle, bonus and statutory payrolls.
• Review outputs, reconciliations, journals, and vendor deliverables for accuracy and compliance.
• Maintain APAC payroll governance, SOPs, approvals, audit trails, and documentation standards.
• Improve payroll quality, control disciplines, and data confidentiality across the region.
• Ensure country-specific payroll, tax, social security, and reporting requirements are met.
• Collaborate with finance, HR, and external advisors on payroll matters.
• Manage payroll vendors and technology partners, overseeing service levels and improvements.
• Lead payroll-related projects including system implementations and country setups.
• Partner with HRIS/IT and vendors to ensure data integrity and reporting capabilities.

Skills

Payroll leadership

Stakeholder management

Excel

Payroll analytics

Vendor management

HRIS implementations

Data reconciliation

Attention to detail

Problem solving

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in HR/Finance/Accounting/Business Administration

Job description

Currie & Brown is one of the leading International physical asset management and construction consultancies, dedicated to advising clients worldwide with our expertise and experience in multiple sectors and services. We are differentiated by our people, innovation and reputation with a genuine global office network.

Our people, from the first-day apprentice to senior management make our business what it is today. Everybody in the Currie & Brown family, no matter how experienced they are, plays their own unique part in our success and have fun along the way.

The role – what is it we would like you to do?

This role will lead the governance, processing oversight, quality control, compliance, vendor coordination, and continuous improvement of payroll operations across our businesses in the Asia Pacific region.

The incumbent is responsible for ensuring payroll is processed accurately, on time, securely, and in compliance with country-specific statutory, tax, labour, and reporting requirements. The role will act as the regional payroll subject matter expert, escalation point, and process owner for APAC payroll operations.

The role is suited to a payroll leader with strong multi-country payroll experience, excellent stakeholder management, high attention to detail, strong control discipline, and the ability to improve payroll operations in a complex in-house corporate environment.

Your core duties will involve:

• Lead and oversee end-to-end payroll operations across APAC, ensuring all regular, off-cycle, bonus, commission, allowance, overtime, termination, and statutory payrolls are processed accurately and on time.
• Review and approve payroll outputs, reconciliations, variance analyses, journals, and vendor deliverables, ensuring compliance with payroll calendars, cut-off dates, and approval requirements.
• Own and maintain the APAC payroll governance and control framework, including SOPs, approval metrics, maker-checker controls, audit trails, reconciliations, escalation protocols, and documentation standards.
• Drive payroll quality assurance by conducting control reviews, identifying risks and root causes, implementing corrective actions, and ensuring audit readiness and data confidentiality.
• Ensure compliance with country-specific payroll, tax, social security, pension, labour, benefits, and reporting requirements, including statutory submissions, year-end reporting, and legislative updates.
• Partner with finance, and external advisors on payroll accounting, reconciliations, governance, compliance, audits, and regulatory matters.
• Manage payroll vendors and technology partners, overseeing service delivery, SLA performance, issue resolution, compliance standards, and continuous service improvement.
• Lead payroll-related projects, including vendor transitions, system implementations, process enhancements, new country or entity setups, and payroll transformation initiatives.
• Collaborate with HRIS, IT, finance, and vendors to ensure accurate payroll data management, system integrations, reporting capabilities, and effective master data controls.
• Leverage payroll analytics and reporting to improve visibility, identify risks and inefficiencies, drive automation, and support data-driven decision-making across the region.
• Standardise and continuously improve payroll processes across APAC while balancing local compliance requirements, scalability, operational efficiency, and business growth needs.
• Act as the regional payroll subject matter expert and escalation point, ensuring high-quality stakeholder support, effective issue resolution, capability building, and a culture of accuracy, accountability, compliance and service excellence.

What skills and attributes are we looking for from you

• Bachelor’s degree in Human Resources, Finance, Accounting, Business Administration, or a related discipline.
• 8+ years of progressive payroll experience, including regional, multi-country, shared services, or multinational payroll leadership exposure.
• Strong end-to-end payroll expertise across APAC, with sound knowledge of payroll controls, tax, statutory deductions, social security, labour requirements, filings, and reporting obligations.
• Proven ability to review payroll outputs, reconciliations, audits, accounting controls, vendor submissions, and variance reports with accuracy and sound judgement.
• Experience managing payroll vendors, in-country providers, service levels, issue resolution, and process improvements.
• Advanced Excel, data reconciliation, payroll analytics, and reporting skills; experience with payroll or HRIS implementations, testing, or system enhancements is advantageous.
• High attention to detail, strong control discipline, confidentiality, and ability to manage competing payroll calendars across time zones.
• Strong stakeholder management, communication, escalation, and problem-solving skills, with the confidence to advise regional HR, Finance, vendors, and business stakeholders.
• Excellent written and spoken English.
• Chinese, Japanese, Thai, or other regional language capability is advantageous but not essential.

Why choose Currie & Brown?

Unlike some businesses, we prioritise for the long term and honour our commitments. We are compassionate and inclusive in the way we approach our work, and always look to invest in our people’s futures. Be it a desire to work internationally, a drive to progress, or even a curiosity to operate in a new sector, we are there for our people at every stage – providing advice, support and the structure to achieve. That is why so many of us have established and built successful careers here for so long.

We don’t offer just a job we offer a career with clear structured route to progression, and a track record of making international mobility happen with international moves encouraged on a permanent or secondment basis.

We want you to be able to bring your best self to work everyday and that is why we firmly believe equality, diversity and inclusion should be taken seriously.Diverse people, backgrounds and experiences develop the most innovative of ideas, they are essential to our success, that is why we actively encourage applications from all backgrounds.

With the backing of our parent company, we are a truly independent business. Our people are empowered to make quick, agile decisions, as well as work directly with some of the world’s brightest partner brands in our industry through Dar Group.

• We offer comprehensive benefits packages in all our global regions which have been specifically tailored to offer additional rewards to our employees from entry level to senior executives