About the role

We are hiring a Global Payroll Tower Lead in Chennai to lead end-to-end payroll operations across EMEA countries for a client. You will own payroll governance, compliance, vendor and client management, and payroll integrations with Workday and ServiceNow. The role suits a payroll leader with deep EMEA knowledge, strong stakeholder communication and hands-on experience with Workday Connector, PECI and PICOF. Payroll implementation experience is a plus. It is a 5-day onsite role in Chennai.

Key responsibilities

Payroll operations

• Lead monthly payroll processing across multiple countries, with accuracy, timeliness and statutory compliance (tax, social security, pensions)
  

Governance and compliance

• Set up controls, keep the team audit-ready and follow local regulations
  
• Manage GDPR and data privacy requirements
  

Workday integrations

• Own and improve payroll integrations, and validate data flow through Workday Connector, PECI (Payroll Effective Change Interface) and PICOF (Payroll Interface Change Output File)
  

ServiceNow

• Manage payroll service requests, incident triage and the knowledge base in ServiceNow
  
• Track SLAs and drive continuous improvement
  

Vendor, client and stakeholder management

• Oversee external payroll providers, including governance and performance
  
• Work with HR, Finance, Compliance and country leaders, with clear communications, dashboards and executive updates
  

Controls and reconciliation

• Own gross-to-net reconciliations, finance postings, approvals and payment files
  
• Run pre-payroll and post-payroll controls
  

Change and projects

• Lead transitions, new country go-lives, implementations and payroll transformation projects
  
• Manage parallel and other testing, knowledge transfer (KT) and due diligence (DD)
  

Reporting and analytics

• Build metrics and reports on observations, accuracy and variances
  
• Drive insights and root-cause analysis using advanced Excel
  

Required qualifications and experience

• 10+ years in multi-country payroll, with at least 5 years focused on EMEA (the header says 8 to 15 years)
  
• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, HR, Business or equivalent
  
• Hands-on Workday payroll integrations (Connector, PECI, PICOF)
  
• ServiceNow for case management
  
• Advanced Excel (Power Query, Pivot, VLOOKUP/INDEX-MATCH)
  
• Strong understanding of EMEA statutory rules, tax, social contributions, GDPR and local payroll calendars
  
• Exceptional written and verbal communication, executive-ready reporting and vendor negotiation skills
  
• Experience in project management, change management and cutover
  
• Willing to work 5 days a week onsite in Chennai
  

Preferred qualifications

• Payroll certification such as CIPP or APA
  
• Power BI or Tableau
  
• Jira and Confluence
  
• Payroll implementation experience
  
• SFTP and encryption for payroll files
  

Job details

Why join

• Lead global payroll across EMEA for an international client
  
• Hands-on work with Workday integrations and ServiceNow
  
• Lead new country go-lives and transformation projects
  
• Clear path to senior payroll and HR operations leadership