Payroll Team Lead

About the Role

As a Payroll Team Lead, you will play a strategic leadership role, remotely managing both people and processes to ensure seamless payroll operations across five APAC markets (Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Taiwan). Reporting to the Regional HR Payroll Lead, you will drive cross-functional collaboration between HR and Finance to deliver high-quality, compliant, and efficient payroll services.

You will also be a key contributor to our global payroll transformation initiative, supporting process standardization, automation, and continuous improvement efforts.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and manage payroll operations for the five markets mentioned, ensuring accuracy, timeliness, and compliance.
• Drive payroll strategy and execution, overseeing payroll processing, vendor management, stakeholder engagement, and employee experience.
• Ensure governance and compliance, managing risk assessments, audits, and adherence to local labor and tax regulations.
• Develop and mentor a high-performing payroll team, fostering a culture of ownership, problem-solving, and customer-centricity.
• Collaborate with HR, Finance, Procurement, and Compliance to optimize payroll-related policies, reporting, and processes.
• Oversee employee support case management, ensuring SLAs, performance metrics, and service quality meet organizational standards.
• Identify and implement continuous improvement initiatives, leveraging CI/Gemba methodologies to streamline payroll operations.
• Support payroll transformation projects, including system upgrades, automation, and process enhancements.
• Handle escalations and complex payroll issues, providing strategic solutions and ensuring smooth resolution.

Qualifications & Leadership Traits

• Experience in payroll operations, with at least 5 years of experience in a Payroll Team Lead position; experience in managing large-scale operations is beneficial but strong leadership, team-building, and strategic thinking are key to success.
• Proven leadership skills and experience managing remote teams and cross-functional collaborations. Experience in leading teams in complex environments or transformation projects will be valued.
• Expertise in Workday & ServiceNow. Other HRIS and financial system experience beneficial.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills, working with various subsets of HR and Finance.
• Resilient and adaptable to change, thriving in fast-paced, transformational environments.
• Strategic problem-solver with an analytical mindset and the ability to navigate complex payroll challenges.
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills, with experience engaging senior leadership and external vendors.