Manager, Payroll Operations - Sub Saharan

remotereferralboardinternaluseonly; South Africa; On-site; ZAR 11,303,000 - 16,147,000; Full time

Job summary

Remote is seeking a Manager, Payroll Operations to lead a team responsible for accurate, compliant payroll delivery across multiple countries. You will manage payroll specialists, resolve issues, and ensure timely processing while driving process improvements.

The role requires strong leadership, policy discipline, and the ability to navigate a remote-first, globally distributed payroll function. You will own country-specific payroll requirements, partner with vendors, and contribute to global

Qualifications

• Proven experience owning payroll outcomes for a team in regional or multi-country environments.
• Experience leading teams through payroll operations and audits.
• Strong understanding of payroll compliance across jurisdictions.

Responsibilities

• Own payroll outcomes for your team, ensuring accuracy, timeliness, and compliance within scope.
• Provide day-to-day leadership and coaching to a team of payroll specialists.
• Lead investigations into payroll issues and drive resolution within authority.
• Provide input into performance ratings and recommend actions when required.
• Foster a safe, high-accountability team environment.
• Own end-to-end payroll delivery for a defined group of countries, ensuring regulatory compliance.

Skills

Payroll leadership

People leadership

Investigations

Policies & controls

Hiring input

Operational judgment

Communication

Async communication

Remote/global teams

English fluency

Tools

Payroll systems

Job description

About Remote

Remote is solving modern organizations' biggest challenge - navigating global employment compliantly with ease. We make it possible for businesses of all sizes to recruit, pay, and manage international teams. With our core values at heart and future focused work culture, our team works tirelessly on ambitious problems, asynchronously, around the world. You can find Remoters working from 6 different continents (Antarctica left to go!) and all of our positions are fully remote.

With Innovation as one of the core values, we have built Automation and AI capabilities into the requirements for every role.

We encourage every member of the Remote team to bring their talents, experiences and culture to the table to help us build the best-in-class HR platform.

If you are energetic, curious, motivated and ambitious, be part of our world.

What this job can offer you

The Manager, Payroll Operations is responsible for ensuring accurate, compliant, and timely payroll delivery across a defined portfolio of countries or regions. This role combines people leadership with operational ownership, enabling your team to consistently meet or exceed payroll expectations while developing their skills and capabilities.

As part of the Global Payroll Operations leadership group, you will lead a team of payroll specialists, supporting them through complex operational challenges and helping them prioritize work to maximize impact. You are accountable for translating strategic guidance into clear operational expectations, ensuring the team is aligned to processes, knowledge, and support needed to execute at a high level.

This role requires balancing oversight and autonomy: you drive resolution of escalated payroll issues, apply policies consistently, recommend hiring and performance decisions, and partner with cross-functional stakeholders. At the same time, you foster a high-performing, engaged team capable of delivering results reliably and scaling their impact as the business grows.

You will also contribute to critical global payroll implementation initiatives, providing market-specific expertise and operational input to ensure new country launches, vendor transitions, or process in-housing efforts succeed and maintain operational excellence.

What you bring

• Proven experience owning payroll outcomes for a team in regional or multi-country environments.
• Demonstrated people leadership capability, including coaching, feedback, and performance input.
• Comfortable leading investigations and driving operational resolution.
• Able to clarify and consistently apply policies and controls.
• Experience recommending hiring profiles, team changes, and performance actions.
• Strong operational judgment with the ability to balance speed, accuracy, and customer impact.
• Clear, structured written and verbal communicator, particularly effective in async environments.
• Experience working in remote-first or globally distributed teams is a strong advantage.
• Fluent in English; additional languages are a plus.

Key Responsibilities

Team Leadership & Performance

• Own payroll outcomes for your team, holding accountability for accuracy, timeliness, and compliance within your scope.
• Provide coaching, feedback, and day-to-day leadership to your assigned team of payroll specialists
• Lead operational investigations into payroll issues and drive resolution within defined authority.
• Provide input into performance ratings and recommend performance actions when required.
• Foster a psychologically safe, high-accountability team environment.

Payroll Operations Ownership

• Own end-to-end payroll delivery for a defined group of countries, ensuring regulatory compliance and operational consistency.
• Sustain operational working knowledge of country-specific payroll requirements within your scope.
• Ensure payroll processes are followed, documented, and auditable.
• Manage relationships with external payroll vendors relevant to your portfolio.

Global Payroll Implementations

• Actively support critical global payroll implementation initiatives, including new country launches, vendor transitions, or in-housing efforts.
• Contribute market- and country-specific payroll expertise to ensure implementations are operationally sound and sustainable.
• Identify execution risks early and partner with implementation and cross-functional teams to mitigate them.
• Own payroll outcomes for your scope post-launch, ensuring stability after go-live.

Operational Excellence & Improvement

• Identify operational risks, recurring issues, and process gaps within your payroll scope.
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives that increase efficiency, reduce errors, and improve team capacity.
• Support the rollout of new tools, automation, and standardized workflows.
• Track and contribute to KPIs, service levels, and quality metrics.
• Manage operational support for service arm of the business - including team performance and engagement in Ze