Payroll Compliance Lead — UKG Pro & AI Audits

Equinox Fitness Club; Northern (KY); On-site; USD 110,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salaries

Complimentary Club membership

Perks and incentives with products and

services

Job summary

Equinox Fitness Club is seeking a Payroll Compliance Manager to develop and monitor payroll compliance programs across the organization. The role focuses on wage‑hour, tax, and reporting requirements, with hands‑on UKG Pro and UKG Workforce Management expertise and AI‑assisted analytics to enhance audits and efficiency.

The successful candidate will partner with Legal, HR, Finance, and Internal Audit to mitigate payroll risks and maintain strong internal controls.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional experience.
• 5+ years of progressive payroll experience, including at least 3 years in payroll compliance, audit, controls, or payroll management.
• Hands-on experience with UKG Pro and UKG Workforce Management is required.
• Experience supporting complex, high-volume, multi-state payroll operations.
• Strong knowledge of federal, state, and local wage‑and‑hour and payroll tax requirements.
• Advanced Microsoft Excel skills, including pivot tables, lookups, data validation, exception analysis, and large‑data reconciliation.
• Demonstrated proficiency using generative AI and AI‑enabled analytics tools in payroll, compliance, finance, audit, or HR environment.

Responsibilities

• Monitor compliance with federal, state, and local payroll laws, including wage‑and‑hour, overtime, minimum wage, final‑pay, pay‑frequency, meal and rest‑period, paid‑leave, tax, and record‑retention requirements.
• Maintain a comprehensive payroll compliance calendar covering tax filings, regulatory deadlines, year‑end activities, audits, reconciliations, and policy reviews.
• Research regulatory changes and translate requirements into payroll policies, procedures, system configurations, and operational controls.
• Partner with Legal, Human Resources, Finance, Tax, Benefits, Operations, and Internal Audit to address payroll compliance risks.
• Review payroll policies and procedures to ensure consistent application across locations, business units, and employee populations.
• Maintain documentation supporting payroll decisions, regulatory interpretations, and corrective actions.
• UKG System Compliance: Serve as a functional subject‑matter expert for UKG Pro and UKG Workforce Management.
• Evaluate UKG configurations to ensure compliance with company policies, wage‑and‑hour requirements, and payroll tax rules.
• Review pay codes, deduction codes, accruals, work rules, overtime rules, rounding rules, holiday rules, security roles, workflows, and approval controls.
• Partner with Payroll Operations, HRIS, IT, and UKG support teams to test and implement system changes.
• Develop UKG queries, reports, dashboards, and exception reporting to identify payroll compliance issues.
• Validate system updates, configuration changes, interfaces, and patches through documented testing and approval processes.
• Maintain configuration documentation, test scripts, control matrices, and system‑change records.
• Artificial Intelligence and Payroll Analytics: Use approved AI tools to enhance payroll compliance audits, exception analysis, trend identification, policy research, documentation, and process improvement.
• Develop and maintain AI‑assisted payroll audit prompts, compliance checklists, risk models, and standardized review procedures.
• Use AI and data analytics to identify anomalies such as duplicate or unusual payments, excessive manual adjustments, repeated missed punches, unauthorized timecard edits, and overtime anomalies.

Skills

Payroll compliance

Regulatory knowledge

Data analysis

AI analytics

Communication

Project management

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

UKG Pro

UKG Workforce Management

Excel

Job description

Equinox Fitness Club is seeking a Payroll Compliance Manager to develop and monitor payroll compliance programs across the organization. The role focuses on wage‑hour, tax, and reporting requirements, with hands‑on UKG Pro and UKG Workforce Management expertise and AI‑assisted analytics to enhance audits and efficiency.

The successful candidate will partner with Legal, HR, Finance, and Internal Audit to mitigate payroll risks and maintain strong internal controls.