Senior Payroll Product Owner & Customer Support Manager

Role overview

A senior product and support leader is needed to own the payroll product experience across a portfolio of operating companies. The role sits at the intersection of Payroll, Finance, HR, Operations, and IT, turning business and regulatory requirements into dependable system capabilities, repeatable processes, and responsive support. It reports to the VP of Systems and is accountable for both the payroll product roadmap and the customer support model that employees, managers, and operators rely on.

Responsibilities

- Serve as the authoritative business owner for payroll capabilities across enterprise systems, including HR/payroll platforms, time-collection tools, ERP, banking, and finance integrations. - Develop and maintain the product roadmap, backlog, requirements, user stories, acceptance criteria, and configuration decisions. - Govern payroll configuration across earnings, deductions, benefits, taxes, garnishments, unions, prevailing wage, time collection, PTO/accruals, reimbursements, labor costing, and general-ledger integration. - Own the payroll customer support model, including service levels, knowledge content, case quality, and communication to employees, managers, payroll teams, and operating companies. - Lead implementation and stabilization activities for new operating companies, including parallel payroll, user acceptance testing, cutover, data migration, and post-go-live support. - Resolve payroll risks and defects from identification through correction, validation, communication, and preventive action.

Requirements

- Active Certified Payroll Professional (CPP) or Fundamental Payroll Certification (FPC) credential from PayrollOrg at hire; CPP strongly preferred, with a path to attain it for FPC holders. - Seven or more years of progressive payroll experience, including hands-on ownership of complex, multi-state U.S. payroll. - Deep expertise in payroll calculations, taxation, wage-and-hour requirements, deductions, garnishments, year-end processing, corrections, reconciliations, internal controls, and audit support. - Experience owning or administering a payroll product, payroll module, HRIS, ERP, or workforce-management platform, including requirements, configuration, testing, releases, and production support. - Strong knowledge of time and labor, job costing, accounting integration, and payroll general-ledger reconciliation. - Demonstrated ability to translate recurring support issues into durable product, process, control, or training improvements.

Nice to have

- Experience supporting Puerto Rico or Canadian payroll, or a National Payroll Institute Payroll Compliance Professional (PCP) designation. - Background in construction, mechanical services, field services, or another multi-entity environment with job costing, unions, certified payroll, and prevailing wage. - Familiarity with enterprise payroll technology such as COINS, ADP Workforce Now, employee self-service, mobile time capture, and ERP integrations. - Experience with acquisition integration, payroll conversion, parallel payroll, and post-go-live stabilization. - SOX-ready control design, segregation of duties, audit evidence, and data governance experience, ideally in a private-equity-backed or rapidly scaling enterprise.