EU Payroll Process & Systems Manager

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For 75 years, Charles River employees have worked together to assist in the discovery, development and safe manufacture of new drug therapies. When you join our family, you will have a significant impact on the health and well-being of people across the globe. Whether your background is in life sciences, finance, IT, sales or another area, your skills will play an important role in the work we perform. In return, we'll help you build a career that you can feel passionate about.

Job Summary

We are currently recruiting for a European Payroll Process and Systems Manager to work in our European Shared Services team on a 6 month fixed term contract. This role will report into the Director of Global Payroll Operations.

The position plays a key role in strategy execution, team leadership, vendor management, and collaboration with internal and external stakeholders. A key requirement for the role will be the identification and development of stakeholder relationships both to internal clients and working with external providers.

Duties and responsibilities include:

• Lead payroll execution across designated countries, ensuring accuracy, timeliness, and compliance.
• Manage daily payroll operations, including time & attendance systems, data integrity, and automation to minimize manual processes.
• Oversee the development and enhancement of payroll processes, ensuring alignment with global payroll strategy.
• Ensure compliance with local tax laws, statutory obligations, and company policies.
• Oversee payroll audits (internal, external, statutory, and tax authority) and manage relationships with external auditors.
• Stay current on legislative changes and ensure payroll operations remain compliant across all applicable jurisdictions.
• Provide guidance on legislative updates and ensure teams are trained accordingly.
• Serve as the key point of contact for Sarbanes-Oxley (SoX) compliance and local control efforts.
• Escalate risks and propose practical solutions to mitigate compliance-related issues.
• Support payroll integration for acquisitions and transitions to the global payroll operating strategy.
• Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) and service level agreements (SLAs), providing regular reports to leadership.
• Manage payroll-related budgets, ensuring alignment with financial targets.
• Monitor and report on budget variances, optimizing costs where possible.
• Oversee external service provider contracts, ensuring service completeness and cost-effectiveness.
• Ensure compliance with all reporting requirements, including gender pay gap reporting, UK P11D filings, and other country-specific obligations.
• Maintain a proactive approach to issue resolution, adopting a "no surprises" methodology.
• Support special projects and other duties as assigned by leadership.

Minimum requirements for the position are as follows:

• Bachelor's degree (B.A. /B.S.) or equivalent in finance or related discipline.
• Relevant experience in Payroll Operations and/or training. Prior management experience required.
• Must have knowledge of Global View and/or Celergo payroll systems.
• In-depth understanding of European payroll processes.
• Ability to effectively document and enhance payroll processes.
• Experience with process improvement initiatives and managing multiple projects simultaneously (e.g., one-time payments, interface enhancements).
• Background in payroll interfaces, particularly SuccessFactors to Global View/Celergo.
• Ability to collaborate effectively with managers while also working independently.
• Self-motivated with a proactive approach to driving payroll process improvements across Europe.
• Experience in Time and Attendance systems tied to payroll time recording is a plus.

Salary for this role will be in the region of £50-60,000 per annum, dependent on skills and experience.

About Corporate Functions

The Corporate Functions provide operational support across Charles River in areas such as Human Resources, Finance, IT, Legal, Sales, Quality Assurance, Marketing, and Corporate Development. They partner with their colleagues across the company to develop and drive strategies and to set global standards. The functions are essential to providing a bridge between strategic vision and operational readiness, to ensure ongoing functional innovation and capability improvement.

About Charles River

Charles River is an early-stage contract research organization (CRO). We have built upon our foundation of laboratory animal medicine and science to develop a diverse portfolio of discovery and safety assessment services, both Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) and non-GLP, to support clients from target identification through preclinical development. Charles River also provides a suite of products and services to support our clients' clinical laboratory testing needs and manufacturing activities. Utilizing this broad portfolio of products and services enables our clients to create a more flexible drug development model, which reduces their costs, enhances their productivity and effectiveness to increase speed to market.

With over 20,000 employees within 110 facilities in over 20 countries around the globe, we are strategically positioned to coordinate worldwide resources and apply multidisciplinary perspectives in resolving our client's unique challenges. Our client base includes global pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, government agencies and hospitals and academic institutions around the world.

At Charles River, we are passionate about our role in improving the quality of people's lives. Our mission, our excellent science and our strong sense of purpose guide us in all that we do, and we approach each day with the knowledge that our work helps to improve the health and well-being of many across the globe. We have proudly supported the development of 80% of the drugs approved by the FDA in the last five years.

At Charles River Laboratories, we recognize and recruit all talent. We are a company committed to the principle of diversity and inclusion and work daily in this direction.

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