Payroll Parallel Testing and Validation Lead

The Opportunity: 

A Federal shared services provider delivers payroll for approximately 605,000 Federal employees across more than 150 agencies. To address inefficiencies in fragmented and aging payroll systems, it is implementing a scalable, cloud-based payroll solution that improves automation, data quality, user experience and compliance, with implementation for the full customer base targeted within eighteen months. 

This position supports the core implementation call order, which covers discovery and fit-gap analysis, solution design and configuration, data migration, interface development, testing and parallel payroll validation, and cutover through hypercare. In this role you will develop and execute the parallel payroll test approach that compares legacy and modernized payroll results, analyze and resolve variances, and produce the test evidence supporting the Government's cutover decision. 

Work is performed remotely from within the United States, with periodic on-site presence as the assignment requires. 

Responsibilities:

• Develop the parallel payroll test plan, including cycles, population, comparison approach and variance tolerances 

• Execute parallel payroll test cycles and document results for each cycle 

• Perform gross-to-net comparison between legacy and modernized payroll results 

• Analyze and classify payroll variances to root cause 

• Document defects and coordinate resolution with the configuration, conversion and interface teams 

• Maintain the discrepancy log and supporting audit trail 

• Prepare test evidence and reporting for Government review and go/no-go decisions 

• Provide knowledge transfer and training on the comparison approach and supporting tools 

Qualifications: 

Required: 

• Bachelor's degree and 7 years of relevant experience. Additional experience may be substituted for degree. 

• 7 or more years in system testing, validation or reconciliation, including direct experience with payroll parallel testing, payroll validation, or financial system parallel-run reconciliation on a replacement or migration 

• Experience designing a comparison and reconciliation approach — population, grain, classification scheme and tolerances — rather than executing a plan designed by someone else 

• Experience defining and negotiating acceptance criteria and variance tolerances with a client in advance of results 

• Variance root-cause analysis across system boundaries, separating defects in one system from defects in another and from acceptable differences 

• Working SQL, and hands-on experience comparing data across two systems at population scale, whether through purpose-built tooling or a platform supplied by the program 

Desired: 

• Federal payroll knowledge — Title 5 and non-Title 5 pay, retirement and benefits, premium pay and statutory caps 

• Prior experience at a federal payroll shared service provider, or on a federal payroll system migration 

• Large commercial payroll conversion at scale with full-population comparison, or general ledger migration validation 

• Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM or Cloud Payroll, or payroll validation on Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) Payroll, PeopleSoft or SAP Payroll 

• Test automation development where the comparison logic was the deliverable