Senior Payroll Specialist (APAC)

The role

The Senior Payroll Specialist-APAC owns end-to-end payroll for the company’s APAC entities and plays a hands-on role in US payroll; both regions are core to the role. This role harmonizes, simplifies, and continuously improves payroll execution and payroll accounting across the region’s countries, entities, pay groups, payroll providers, and systems. This is to make sure payroll remains accurate, compliant, trusted, and understandable as the company grows in APAC without a proportional increase in manual work or risk. The role works alongside the US payroll owner on pay cycles, employment tax compliance, year-end, and controls, and provides full continuity during peak periods and absences.

Your responsibilities will include: 

• Own end-to-end payroll execution for the company’s APAC entities across countries, pay groups, and payroll providers; define consistent execution standards that meet each jurisdiction’s statutory and employment requirements.
• Ensure statutory compliance across APAC jurisdictions: income tax withholding, social security and provident fund contributions, employer levies, monthly and annual statutory filings and employee tax certificates, new-country and new-entity registrations, and timely resolution of authority notices.
• Administer regulated and complex pay items accurately: statutory bonuses and gratuity, leave encashment, full-and-final settlements, equity income (RSU/option) taxation, benefits deductions, taxable perquisites, and expatriate or cross-border arrangements.
• Support US payroll execution alongside the US payroll owner: process and review multistate pay cycles and off-cycle payments, own assigned workstreams in the US payroll calendar, share year-end delivery (W-2 season), and provide full continuity during peak periods and absences.
• Drive process harmonization and simplification across APAC countries to reduce manual steps, handoffs, rework, and off-cycle runs.
• Lead payroll execution during transitions (new country or entity launches, vendor changes, system changes, restructures/M&A), ensuring continuity and control.
• Ensure payroll accounting remains clean as scope changes: consistent journals, accruals, reversals, and reconciliation standards across entities and currencies.
• Monitor preventative controls by design, including SOX-aligned payroll controls; improve evidence pack quality and audit readiness.
• Govern payroll providers against agreed SLAs and KPIs; drive remediation where service quality falls short.
• Lead root-cause analysis for recurring payroll, accounting, or service failures; design and implement durable fixes.
• Act as escalation owner for complex or sensitive pay issues in the region; provide authoritative explanations to senior stakeholders.
• Partner with HR Ops, Finance, Legal/Compliance, benefits providers, and payroll vendors to deliver scalable operating models and service quality.
• Provide training and guidance to new team joiners when needed.

We expect you to have: 

• 7+ years of payroll experience spanning APAC and US payrolls, including multi-country scope with in-country providers in complex environments (growth, change, or hybrid in-house/outsourced models).
• Deep working knowledge of payroll and employment-tax compliance across APAC jurisdictions, including India: statutory withholding and social contributions, statutory bonuses and terminations, year-end reporting, and expatriate/cross-border considerations.
• Working knowledge of US payroll fundamentals (multi-state withholding, FICA/FUTA/SUI, W-2 year-end) and readiness to act as the designated US backup, including overlap with US working hours when covering.
• Strong payroll controllership skills: ability to design controls, enforce SoD/approvals, and ensure audit-ready evidence.
• Proven capability improving payroll processes (standardization, automation enablement, reducing manual effort and errors).
• Strong payroll accounting knowledge, including multi-currency environments, and experience working with Finance during close and audits.
• Demonstrated ability to lead transitions (vendor/system/new country or entity) with structured planning and issue resolution.
• Excellent stakeholder management across time zones and cultures; comfortable acting as an escalation owner and payroll authority.

It will be an added bonus if you have: 

• Hands-on experience with multi-country payroll platforms or aggregators and their HRIS/GL integrations.
• Experience operating payroll controls in a SOX-compliant, US-listed company environment.
• Hands-on US payroll processing experience, ideally in a shared-services or follow-the-sun support model. Knowledge and experience with US statutory requirements at Federal, State and local levels
• Experience with payroll operating models and vendor governance (SLAs, KPIs, remediation).
• Experience turning statutory/operational requirements into system/workflow requirements.
• Project management certification or comparable experience leading cross-functional initiatives.

Competencies & Behavioral Traits:

• Systems thinking: redesigns the process so it scales, rather than adding checks and manual work.
• Bias for prevention: anticipates issues and builds guardrails.
• Influence without authority; can align multiple stakeholders and vendors around standards.
• Comfort with ambiguity and change; makes decisions with incomplete information.
• Reliability across time zones: a dependable backup who keeps continuity when it matters most.