Payroll Compliance Specialist

Role overview

The Payroll Compliance Specialist strengthens and oversees payroll compliance, wage-hour governance, and payroll risk mitigation across the organization with a strong emphasis on California labor laws. You will partner with Payroll, HR, HRIS, Legal, Operations, and IT to proactively identify, investigate, and resolve payroll compliance risks.

Responsibilities

• Monitor wage and hour compliance, including:
  • Meal and rest periods
  • Premium pay, overtime, split shifts
  • Reporting time pay and final pay requirements
  • Pay frequency requirements and minimum wage compliance
• Conduct proactive payroll and timekeeping audits to find and resolve issues such as:
  • Payroll discrepancies and compliance gaps
  • Integration failures
  • Late/missed meal periods and breaks
  • Untimely payments
• Build and maintain compliance reporting and analytics, including:
  • Exception reporting
  • Premium pay analysis
  • Minimum wage reviews
  • Final pay tracking
• Work with HRIS/Payroll/Operations/IT and external vendors to ensure payroll system configurations and integrations support compliance requirements.
• Support payroll governance: process improvements, compliance controls, SOPs, escalation protocols, and audit readiness.
• Perform root cause analysis and lead corrective action planning and remediation.
• Support litigation prevention by assisting with wage-hour compliance reviews, legal requests, and documentation analysis.
• Track local labor law developments and partner with leadership on operational/policy changes.
• Support internal and external audits related to payroll, wage-hour compliance, and payroll system controls.
• Assist with multi-jurisdiction payroll compliance for remote and field workers (e.g., travel time, drive time, mobile workforce considerations).
• Collaborate cross-functionally to drive continuous compliance improvement.
• Handle sensitive payroll, employee, and legal information with confidentiality.

Requirements

• 5+ years in payroll compliance, wage-hour compliance, payroll operations, or related experience.
• Strong knowledge of California wage and hour laws and payroll compliance requirements.
• Experience supporting large hourly, non-exempt employee populations.
• Experience with payroll systems such as ADP Lyric or ADP Workforce Now (or similar HCM/payroll platforms) preferred.
• Strong analytical, auditing, and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to manage sensitive matters with discretion and professionalism.
• Excellent communication, organizational, and cross-functional collaboration skills.

Nice to have

• PAGA knowledge and/or wage-hour litigation risk familiarity.
• Experience supporting retail, field, distributed, or mobile workforces.
• Bachelor’s degree in HR, Business Administration, Accounting, or Finance (preferred).