Senior Workday Payroll & Accounting Specialist (Hybrid NYC)

American Arbitration Association; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 95,000 - 105,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

403(b) retirement plan

Student loan assistance

Paid time off

Job summary

The American Arbitration Association (AAA) in New York City seeks an experienced Workday Payroll & Accounting Specialist to join our Finance team. You will act as a functional lead for Workday Payroll, ensuring accurate processing, strong controls, and close collaboration with Payroll, Finance, HR, Benefits, and IT.

Hybrid work applies: two days in the office per week at our Manhattan headquarters, with opportunities to improve processes, tooling, and payroll accounting across the organization.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, Human Resources, Information Systems, Business, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• 5-7+ years of payroll experience, including significant hands-on experience with Workday Payroll.
• Strong knowledge of Workday Payroll configuration, business processes, reporting, calculated fields, testing, and troubleshooting.
• Experience with payroll costing and accounting configuration.
• Working knowledge of payroll accounting, including journal entries, general ledger reconciliations, accruals, and month-end close.
• Understanding of federal, state, and local payroll requirements.
• Strong Excel and data-analysis skills.
• Experience participating in Workday implementations, enhancements, or optimization initiatives preferred.
• Workday certification, CPP, and/or CPA designation is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a functional administrator and subject matter expert for Workday Payroll, supporting configuration, administration, troubleshooting, testing, reporting, and optimization.
• Configure and maintain Workday Payroll components, including earnings, deductions, payroll calculations, tax elections, withholding rules, costing allocations, and related business processes.
• Maintain payroll accounting and costing configuration, including appropriate mapping to general ledger accounts, cost centers, and other financial dimensions.
• Develop and maintain Workday payroll reports, calculated fields, dashboards, audit reports, and controls.
• Troubleshoot complex Workday Payroll issues, identify root causes, and implement configuration or process solutions.
• Support Workday releases, system enhancements, integrations, regression testing, and implementation of new functionality.
• Partner with HR, Benefits, Finance, IT, and external vendors on integrations involving banking, taxes, benefits, timekeeping, and financial systems.
• Identify opportunities to automate payroll processes, strengthen controls, improve data quality, and reduce manual activity.
• Support accurate and timely regular and off-cycle payroll processing, including bonuses, adjustments, deductions, garnishments, retroactive payments, and other payroll transactions.
• Assist with quarterly and year-end payroll activities, including tax reconciliations and W-2 processing.
• Prepare and review payroll journal entries, reconciliations, accruals, and other payroll-related month-end accounting activities.
• Support internal and external audits and help maintain effective payroll accounting and reconciliation controls.

Skills

Workday Payroll

Payroll accounting

Excel

Data analysis

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in Accounting/Finance/IS or related field

Tools

Workday

Job description

The American Arbitration Association (AAA) in New York City seeks an experienced Workday Payroll & Accounting Specialist to join our Finance team. You will act as a functional lead for Workday Payroll, ensuring accurate processing, strong controls, and close collaboration with Payroll, Finance, HR, Benefits, and IT.

Hybrid work applies: two days in the office per week at our Manhattan headquarters, with opportunities to improve processes, tooling, and payroll accounting across the organization.