Regional Payroll Lead (Americas)
Austin, TX | $125,000 to $180,000 base + RSUs + benefits | Relocation available
About the company
Our client is a high-growth, publicly listed fintech that moves money across borders for millions of individuals and businesses worldwide. They process well over $145 billion in cross-border volume each year and are still expanding into new markets, with further country launches planned over the next 18 months.
About the role
This is a newly shaped leadership role sitting between the Global Payroll Lead and the day-to-day processing team. The brief is simple: assess how payroll is currently run across the Americas, then build what it should look like as the business scales.
You'll own Workday Payroll for the Americas, lead a team of four across Austin and São Paulo, and manage the third-party payroll vendors that run payroll in Latin America. You'll report directly into the Global Payroll Lead, who is based in the UK, and work closely with Finance, HR, People and Legal.
What you'll be doing
- Owning end-to-end US payroll on Workday, making sure every cycle is accurate, compliant and on time
- Overseeing LatAm payroll (Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Colombia) through third-party providers, including Deel
- Leading, coaching and developing a team of four payroll specialists across two locations
- Reviewing current processes and fixing the root causes of recurring errors and manual corrections in Workday
- Owning SOX controls for payroll and acting as the main point of contact for internal and external audits
- Rebuilding strong working relationships between payroll and partner teams in Finance, HR and Legal
- Managing vendor performance, SLAs and escalations across the region
- Supporting payroll setup for new countries as the business expands
- Handling equity related payroll processing, including RSU events and associated tax withholding
What we're looking for
- 5+ years of hands-on Workday Payroll experience, with active Workday Payroll accreditation
- 3+ years managing and developing a payroll team
- Solid experience with SOX controls and supporting internal and external audits
- Experience managing third-party payroll vendors, ideally across Latin America (Deel experience is a big plus)
- Comfortable working across regions and time zones with a remote manager and distributed team
- A process improvement mindset: you like to understand why something is broken, not just patch it
- Strong stakeholder skills and the confidence to push back and influence senior partners
- Experience in a fast-growing or publicly listed tech or fintech business is preferred
- CPP or FPC certification is a plus but not essential
What's on offer
- Base salary of $125,000 to $180,000 depending on experience
- RSUs on top of base
- Comprehensive benefits package
- Full relocation support to Austin for the right candidate
- A genuine chance to shape the payroll function at a global company during a period of real growth
Interested?
Apply here or message me directly for a confidential conversation about the role.
