We are seeking an experienced Payroll Project Manager to lead the planning, implementation, and delivery of payroll projects. The role will be responsible for managing the end-to-end payroll project lifecycle, coordinating business and technical teams, ensuring payroll requirements are accurately delivered, and overseeing system integrations, testing, compliance, and go-live activities.
The successful candidate will have strong experience in payroll operations, payroll systems implementation, HRIS, project management, and cross-functional stakeholder management.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead end-to-end payroll projects from planning and requirements gathering through implementation, go-live, and post-implementation support.
- Develop and maintain comprehensive project plans, milestones, timelines, dependencies, and deliverables.
- Coordinate payroll process design, system configuration, testing, and implementation activities.
- Manage payroll-related integrations between HRIS, payroll, time and attendance, finance, banking, benefits, and other third-party systems.
- Oversee data migration, employee data validation, payroll configuration, and reconciliation activities.
- Lead System Integration Testing (SIT), User Acceptance Testing (UAT), parallel payroll runs, payroll validation, and production readiness.
- Ensure payroll calculations, earnings, deductions, benefits, taxes, leave, overtime, and other payroll components are accurately configured and validated.
- Collaborate with Payroll, HR, Finance, IT, vendors, and implementation partners to ensure successful project delivery.
- Identify, assess, and manage project risks, issues, dependencies, and change requests.
- Monitor project progress, track key milestones, and provide regular status updates and reports to senior management.
- Ensure applicable payroll regulations, statutory requirements, and compliance standards are incorporated into project design and implementation.
- Maintain project documentation, including RAID logs, action trackers, requirements documents, test results, status reports, and implementation decisions.
- Manage stakeholder expectations and ensure timely resolution of project-related challenges.
- Coordinate knowledge transfer and ensure a smooth transition to payroll and HR operations teams following implementation.
Required Qualifications & Experience
- Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Human Resources, Finance, Information Technology, or a related field.
- 5+ years of experience in payroll, HRIS, payroll transformation, or payroll implementation projects.
- Proven experience managing payroll system implementations, upgrades, or transformation initiatives.
- Strong understanding of end-to-end payroll processes, including payroll calculation, validation, reconciliation, and reporting.
- Experience working with payroll systems, HRIS platforms, and payroll-related integrations.
- Experience integrating payroll systems with HRIS, Finance/ERP, time management, benefits, banking, and third-party applications.
- Experience managing payroll projects across multiple countries, legal entities, or business units.
- Strong knowledge of payroll compliance, statutory requirements, and data privacy considerations.
- Demonstrated experience managing cross-functional teams, external vendors, project timelines, and stakeholder expectations.
- Excellent project planning, risk management, problem-solving, communication, and organizational skills.
- Proficiency in project management tools and documentation practices.
- PMP, PRINCE2, Agile, or an equivalent project management certification is preferred.