Director, Product Owner - Payroll & Time Digital & Tech

GSK; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

GSK is hiring a Director, Payroll and Time who will lead a group of HR products including Workday and SAP payroll/time systems. You will translate VP strategy into roadmaps, coach Product Owners, and drive education, governance, and value delivery across multiple teams.

You will partner with HR and AI functions, ensure compliance and security, and guide cross-functional delivery while optimizing processes and cycle times for payroll operations.

Qualifications

• Experience leading end-to-end payroll and time systems delivery.
• Proven track record in HR systems product strategy and value delivery.
• Strong ability to translate business goals into roadmaps and priorities.
• Excellent stakeholder management and cross-functional leadership.
• Familiarity with SaFe/Agile delivery and release planning.
• Knowledge of regulatory, SOX, privacy and security requirements.

Responsibilities

• Translate HR strategy into actionable product roadmaps and priorities.
• Coach Product Owners and ensure robust business cases and backlogs.
• Partner with stakeholders to identify pain points and opportunities.
• Oversee delivery quality, usability, and release stability across products.
• Promote agile practices and incremental value delivery with transparency.
• Manage risks, dependencies, and cross-platform integration considerations.
• Lead use of AI tools responsibly and align with security requirements.
• Provide financial oversight of product budgets and resourcing.

Skills

Payroll systems

Time & Attendance

Product leadership

Stakeholder management

Agile/Safe

Workday knowledge

SAP knowledge

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or Engineering

Master's degree preferred

Industry certifications in Agile Methodologies / CPM

Tools

Workday payroll

SAP payroll

Data analytics tools

Job description

The Director, Payroll and Time lead a group of related HR Products (i.e. Payroll and Time & Attendance Systems including workday, SAP and others) within the HR Digital & Tech Domain, ensuring they deliver measurable value, support business processes, and are continuously improved. They work closely with the VP, Global HR Digital & Tech to translate functional goals into product roadmaps and provide direction to Product Owners on prioritisation, delivery focus, and product performance. The Director ensures Payroll & Time-related Products are usable, compliant, secure, and efficient to operate, while fostering a culture of agile delivery, value realisation, and continuous improvement across their Product group.

• Translate functional strategies provided by the VP, HR Digital & Tech into actionable product roadmaps and delivery priorities across Payroll & Time-related group of Products.
• Provide direction and coaching to Product Owners, ensuring requirements are well-defined, business cases for investment are robust, backlogs are prioritised to support business goals, architectural guidance, compliance needs, data-driven decisions, FinOps considerations, and domain ecosystem dependencies through cross-functional partnering.
• Partner with business stakeholders to understand pain points, process challenges, and improvement needs, shaping product enhancements and technology-enabled opportunities. This includes both short term improvement but also long term strategy and key projects definition
• Partner with HR function and AI function to define, delivery and embed the use of agentic to simplify and improve the payroll processes
• Oversee delivery execution across the People Services product group, ensuring the quality, usability, stability, and supportability of released features and services.
• Promote agile and iterative delivery practices (e.g. SaFe, Scrum), supporting incremental value release, transparency of priorities, and improved collaboration with business users.
• Act as the escalation point for critical product performance, delivery issues, and dependency conflicts, addressing risks and facilitating decisions.
• Champion the adoption of user-centred improvements, business process optimisation, and automation opportunities that reduce cycle time and enhance user experience.
• Ensure effective risk, security, privacy, and compliance management (e.g. SOX controls) across the Payroll & Time product group, embedding relevant controls in partnership with security and compliance SMEs.
• Support Solution Architects in shaping cross-product and cross-platform solutions, ensuring Product Owners manage dependencies to deliver integrated outcomes.
• Track and report performance against agreed KPIs for the product group, driving continuous improvement activities to maximise value for the HR Digital & Tech Domain.
• Provide financial oversight of the domain, including product budgets and internal/external team resourcing costs, to inform strategic decision-making and ensure alignment with GSK's financial objectives.
• Lead your team in using approved AI tools to improve productivity and ways of working, role-modelling responsible use and follow GSK's Responsible AI, privacy and security requirements.
  Bachelor's or Master's degree in a relevant field (e.g., Computer Science, Information Technology, or Engineering), or equivalent experience
• Industry certifications highly desirable (e.g. Agile Methodologies, CPM)
• Extensive experience overseeing end-to-end product delivery, including prioritisation, backlog management, solution design support, testing oversight, and value-focused release planning.
• Proven track record in overseeing the definition and execution of valuable Product strategies for HR Systems, realising tangible benefits for the Business.
• Deep experience in concurrently overseeing multiple Product teams across the full delivery lifecycle, from requirements elicitation through to release.
• Proficient in conveying complex technology ideas to non-conversant audiences.
• Very strong analytical and problem-solving skills for developing Product use cases and determining their associated value.
• Highly experienced team leader that can effectively manage small to medium IT delivery teams).
• Very strong communication skills and ability to influence senior stakeholders, aligning on competing priorities and guiding Business teams on the feasibility of requests vs. technology constraints.
• Knowledge of workday payroll and SAP payroll

Other Job-Related Skills/Background

• Ability to work in a very fast-paced and fluid environment
• Comfortable with ambiguity and change
• Strong communication and influencing skills, able to guide prioritisation decisions, resolve delivery conflicts, and align multiple stakeholders around shared product outcomes.
• Skilled in coaching and developing Product Owners, fostering a culture of user-centred design, value-based delivery, and continuous improvement.
• Able to interpret business processes, regulatory needs, and operational insights to identify optimisation and automation opportunities that enhance product performance and user experience.
• Comfortable working within structured governance, security, and compliance constraints, ensuring product changes are well controlled, supportable, and aligned to organisational standards, Agile Methodology, Backlogs, Cross-Functional Teamwork, Design Thinking, DevOps, Process Diagrams, Product Strategies, Project Management, Requirements Gathering, Services Management, Software Development, User Experience (UX), User Research, User Story
  At GSK, we unite science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together. We are a global biopharma company with a special purpose - to unite science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together. We're proud to be leading a healthcare revolution, and we're looking for people who can help us deliver on our ambition, Uniting science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together.

GSK is a global biopharma company with a purpose to unite science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together. We aim to positively impact the health of 2.5 billion people by the end of the decade, as a successful, growing company where people can thrive. We get ahead of disease by preventing and treating it with innovation in specialty medicines and vaccines. We focus on four therapeutic areas: respiratory, immunology and inflammation; oncology; HIV; and infectious diseases - to impact health at scale. People and patients around the world count on the medicines and vaccines we make, so we're committed to creating an environment where our people can thrive and focus on what matters most. Our culture of being ambitious for patients, accountable for impact and doing the right thing is the foundation for how, together, we deliver for patients, shareholders and our people. GSK is an Equal Opportunity Employer. This ensures that all qualified applicants will receive equal consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity, and sexual orientation), parental status, national origin, age, disability, genetic information (including family medical history), military service or any basis prohibited under federal, state or local law. We believe in an agile working culture for all our roles. If flexibility is important to you, we encourage you to explore with our hiring team what the opportunities are. Should you require any adjustments to our process to assist you in demonstrating your strengths and capabilities contact us at [e-mail] where you can also request a call. Please note should your enquiry not relate to adjustments, we will not be able to support you through these channels. However, we have created a Recruitment FAQ guide. Click the Link where you will find answers to multiple questions we receive.

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