Lead, People Technology Solutions Design (Payroll & Benefits)
Avalara
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Benefits offered by this job
Job summary
Avalara is seeking a Lead, People Technology Solutions Design to own Workday Payroll, Benefits, Time Tracking, and Absence design. You will partner with HR, Payroll, IT, and vendors to ensure accurate payroll, seamless benefits, and compliant time data across global operations.
You will drive scalable configurations, governance, and AI-enabled automation, elevating the People Technology function and reducing operational risk while supporting Avalara’s growth.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or Engineering.
- 7+ years of Workday configuration experience in enterprise HR technology.
- Hands-on Workday Payroll, Benefits, Time Tracking, Time Off, and Absence configuration.
- Experience with Workday integrations, reporting, and security.
- SOX-compliant enterprise experience.
- Ability to lead cross-functional initiatives and deliver scalable solutions.
- Experience applying AI to HR technology outcomes.
Responsibilities
- Own Workday solution design across Payroll, Benefits, Time Tracking, Time Off, and Absence, delivering scalable, compliant, and maintainable solutions.
- Lead design and optimization of Workday Payroll configurations supporting multi-state and global payroll operations.
- Design and maintain Benefits solutions including eligibility, enrollment events, carrier integrations, and open enrollment.
- Configure and optimize Time Tracking, Time Off, and Absence Management to ensure regulatory compliance and payroll accuracy.
- Lead cross-functional initiatives from requirements through production deployment with HR, Payroll, IT, and vendors.
- Drive continuous improvement by reducing technical debt, simplifying configurations, and leveraging AI-enabled capabilities.
- Serve as the technical authority for assigned Workday domains, establishing governance and best practices.
Skills
Education
Job description
Avalara’s continued global growth requires a scalable, compliant, and reliable People Technology foundation. The Lead, People Technology Solutions Design serves as the technical owner for Workday Payroll, Benefits, Time Tracking, Time Off, and Absence. This role leads solution design, configuration, governance, and continuous improvement across these domains, ensuring employees are paid accurately, benefits are administered seamlessly, and workforce time data supports operational, financial, and regulatory requirements. Partnering closely with HR, Payroll, IT, and external vendors, this role reduces operational risk, improves employee experience, and enables Avalara’s AI-first strategy through automation and intelligent system design.
Raises the technical capability of the People Technology team through deep Workday expertise, scalable design standards, documentation, mentoring, and reduced reliance on external consultants.
Improves payroll accuracy, compliance, operational efficiency, and system reliability while reducing technical debt and supporting global growth.
Delivers accurate pay, seamless benefits administration, and reliable time and absence management, improving employee confidence and manager self-service.
- Own Workday solution design across Payroll, Benefits, Time Tracking, Time Off, and Absence, delivering scalable, compliant, and maintainable solutions.
- Lead design and optimization of Workday Payroll configurations supporting multi-state and global payroll operations.
- Design and maintain Benefits solutions including eligibility, enrollment events, carrier integrations, and open enrollment.
- Configure and optimize Time Tracking, Time Off, and Absence Management to ensure regulatory compliance and payroll accuracy.
- Lead cross-functional initiatives from requirements through production deployment with HR, Payroll, IT, and vendors.
- Drive continuous improvement by reducing technical debt, simplifying configurations, and leveraging AI-enabled capabilities.
- Serve as the technical authority for assigned Workday domains, establishing governance and best practices.
- Established a scalable and well-governed Workday Payroll, Benefits, and Time ecosystem that improves reliability, simplifies administration, and supports Avalara's global growth.
- Delivered two or more strategic Workday initiatives from solution design through production, achieving measurable business value and strong stakeholder adoption.
- Increased stakeholder confidence in People Technology through improved system stability, faster delivery, and trusted partnership with Payroll, HR, Finance, and IT.
- Improved operational efficiency by simplifying configurations, reducing manual processes, and introducing automation that increases quality and scalability.
- Successfully managed both Workday biannual releases with effective impact assessments, testing, and adoption of new capabilities.
- Implemented at least one AI-enabled capability that measurably improved operational efficiency, compliance, reporting, or employee experience. AI Expectations
- Use AI to accelerate requirements analysis, solution design, documentation, testing, and delivery.
- Apply AI and Workday capabilities to identify anomalies, configuration drift, and optimization opportunities.
- Automate repetitive activities such as testing, validation, reporting, and documentation.
- Apply AI responsibly in compliance-sensitive environments following Avalara governance and privacy standards.
- Demonstrate measurable business outcomes through AI adoption and share best practices across the team
- Use AI to accelerate requirements analysis, solution design, documentation, testing, and delivery.
- Apply AI and Workday capabilities to identify anomalies, configuration drift, and optimization opportunities.
- Automate repetitive activities such as testing, validation, reporting, and documentation.
- Apply AI responsibly in compliance-sensitive environments following Avalara governance and privacy standards.
- Demonstrate measurable business outcomes through AI adoption and share best practices across the team.
- B.S. in Computer Science, Information Systems, or Engineering.
- 7+ years of relevant Workday configuration experience aligned to enterprise HR technology.
- Hands-on expertise configuring Workday Payroll, Benefits, Time Tracking, Time Off, and Absence.
- Experience with Workday integrations, reporting, business process framework, calculated fields, and security.
- Experience supporting SOX-compliant enterprise environments.
- Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional initiatives and deliver scalable technical solutions.
- Demonstrated application of AI to improve HR technology outcomes.
At Avalara, this role must raise the bar through stronger quality, ownership, judgment, simplification, and measurable business impact. In practice, that means this People Technology Solutions Design Lead of Payroll & Benefits should: Raise the average performance of the team by demonstrating exceptional ownership, judgment, accountability, and execution. Simplify complexity, improve talent density through coaching and example, challenge assumptions with data, and leave every system, process, and team stronger than you found it.
We are defining the relationship between tax and tech. We’ve already built an industry-leading cloud compliance platform, processing over 54 billion customer API calls and over 6.6 million tax returns a year. Our growth is real - we're a billion dollar business - and we’re not slowing down until we’ve achieved our mission - to be part of every transaction in the world.
- Use AI to accelerate requirements analysis, solution design, documentation, testing, and delivery.
- Apply AI and Workday capabilities to identify anomalies, configuration drift, and optimization opportunities.
- Automate repetitive activities such as testing, validation, reporting, and documentation.
- Apply AI responsibly in compliance-sensitive environments following Avalara governance and privacy standards.
- Demonstrate measurable business outcomes through AI adoption and share best practices across the team.
- Great compensation package
- Paid time off
- Paid parental leave
- Bonuses eligible for many employees
- Private medical insurance
- Life insurance
- Disability insurance
Avalara strongly supports diversity, equity, and inclusion, and is committed to integrating them into our business practices and our organizational culture. We also have a total of 8 employee-run resource groups, each with senior leadership and exec sponsorship.
We’re defining the relationship between tax and tech. We’ve already built an industry-leading cloud compliance platform, processing over 54 billion customer API calls and over 6.6 million tax returns a year. Our growth is real - we're a billion dollar business - and we’re not slowing down until we’ve achieved our mission - to be part of every transaction in the world.
Supporting diversity and inclusion is a cornerstone of our company — we don’t want people to fit into our culture, but to enrich it. All qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, age, gender, national orientation, disability, sexual orientation, US Veteran status, or any other factor protected by law. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.
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