Payroll Operations and Systems Manager

Role Overview

Payroll Operations & Systems Manager at Arbor Education (37.5 hours/week). You own the operational machinery that enables the payroll department to run efficiently and at scale, bridging technical systems with day-to-day payroll delivery.

Key Responsibilities

Operational Operations & Resource Planning

• Strategic capacity management: own resource modeling by analyzing sales forecasts, onboarding pipelines, and seasonal peaks.
• Work allocation strategy: partner with the Head of Payroll to design proactive, data-driven work allocation and reduce reactive assignment.
• Efficiency & utilisation: implement metrics for utilisation, identify bottlenecks, and reduce time-to-process and manual interventions.
• Process engineering: design standardised workflows; identify friction points and implement lean improvements.

Systems Integration & Technical Strategy

• Integration architecture: define and own strategy for integrating customer HRIS platforms with payroll systems.
• Data integrity & automation: create automated controls for synchronisation (aiming for “zero-touch” transfers where the system is the source of truth).
• Technical troubleshooting: escalation point for complex data transfer/configuration issues to prevent payroll delivery delays.
• Product liaison: coordinate with Product/Engineering so software updates and new features support operational efficiency.

Financial Infrastructure & Control

• Payment systems (BACS): manage payment integration protocols; ensure BACS (or equivalent) transmissions are reliable and fail-safe.
• Statutory & third-party connections: standardise/manage integrations for pension providers and HMRC data exchanges; automate secure, compliant file transfers where possible.
• Risk & security: identify operational risks in data security and file handling; implement controls to protect sensitive client data during transit.

Leadership & Stakeholder Partnership

• Work in lock-step with the Head of Payroll: align on payroll accuracy/legislation (Head of Payroll) while you own the “how” via process and systems.

Requirements

• Experience owning payroll operations and/or payroll systems and translating needs into reliable operational workflows.
• Ability to design HRIS-to-payroll integrations with strong focus on data integrity and automation.
• Experience with payment and statutory integrations (including BACS and/or HMRC/pension provider data exchanges) and ensuring secure, compliant file transfer.
• Strong escalation and troubleshooting ability for complex system/configuration issues.
• Comfort partnering cross-functionally with Product/Engineering and operating as a technical-operational leader.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience implementing metrics and process engineering to improve utilisation and reduce time-to-process.
• Familiarity with lean process improvement and capacity/resource planning using forecasting inputs.

Additional Application Instructions

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