Program Manager, International Payroll Implementation

OVERVIEW

The Program Manager, International Payroll Implementation leads the end-to-end coordination of payroll-impacting activities for new country launches, payroll implementations, and related global transformation initiatives. This role ensures that required inputs, decisions, dependencies, approvals, and deliverables across Legal, HR, Benefits, Finance, IT, Payroll, local business stakeholders, and external vendors are identified, sequenced, tracked, and delivered in time to support a successful payroll go-live.

The role is accountable for the integrated implementation plan, governance, risk management, stakeholder alignment, and overall payroll readiness across each rollout.

While the Program Manager must bring a strong understanding of payroll and the upstream and downstream processes that affect it, this role does not own functional payroll configuration, complete provider implementation workbooks, or process payroll. Those activities are led by the Payroll team and relevant implementation partners; this role ensures the work is connected, on track, and ready for each key implementation milestone and go-live.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the overall program management of global payroll implementations and country rollouts, from initial planning through go-live, stabilization, and transition to ongoing operations.
• Apply a consistent global implementation approach across country rollouts while coordinating country-specific payroll requirements, local stakeholders, vendors, dependencies, and readiness considerations.
• Establish and manage a repeatable implementation methodology, including templates, governance routines, readiness criteria, escalation paths, and post-implementation lessons learned.
• Develop and maintain integrated project plans that capture payroll-impacting milestones, deliverables, owners, dependencies, risks, decision points, and critical paths across all relevant workstreams.
• Coordinate payroll-impacting dependencies across Legal, HR, Benefits, Finance, IT, Payroll, Treasury, local business stakeholders, and external implementation partners.
• Ensure payroll-impacting requirements, decisions, and deliverables are appropriately owned, handed off across workstreams, and delivered in time to support implementation and go-live.
• Coordinate with payroll providers, systems vendors, and implementation partners to align delivery plans, dependencies, timelines, and readiness requirements with the broader country rollout plan.
• Coordinate data readiness and testing milestones with Payroll, IT, and implementation partners, ensuring data migration and validation, integration testing, user acceptance testing, and parallel payroll testing, where applicable, have clear owners, completion criteria, issue resolution plans, and required sign-offs.
• Facilitate cross-functional working sessions and governance forums; drive timely decisions, clarify ownership, and escalate risks or blockers that could affect payroll implementation timelines or go-live readiness.
• Monitor implementation progress against agreed milestones and provide clear, concise status reporting to project teams and senior stakeholders, including risks, decisions needed, and recommended mitigation plans.
• Coordinate cutover and go-live planning across workstreams, including final approvals, payroll processing deadlines, production transition activities, contingency plans, and initial hypercare coverage.
• Support change management and operational readiness activities, including process documentation, handoff planning, communications, training coordination, and post-go-live stabilization.
• Identify opportunities to improve implementation controls, strengthen cross-functional ways of working, reduce manual effort, and standardize the global payroll rollout approach.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Human Resources, Finance, Operations, Project Management, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of experience leading complex, cross-functional projects or programs, including demonstrated experience managing global or multi-country payroll implementations across countries with differing payroll, regulatory, and operational requirements.
• Demonstrated experience managing multi-workstream initiatives with interdependent deliverables, competing priorities, external vendors, and senior stakeholder groups.
• Working knowledge of the end-to-end payroll lifecycle and the upstream and downstream processes that affect payroll, including HR data, employment terms, working time, leave, benefits, integrations, banking and payment processes, and statutory employer requirements.
• Experience working with or supporting implementations involving global payroll platforms, time and attendance platforms, HRIS/HCM systems, and related integrations.
• Experience developing and managing integrated project plans, governance structures, milestone tracking, risk and issue logs, and executive-level status reporting.
• Experience building scalable implementation playbooks, templates, readiness assessments, and governance processes.
• Proven ability to influence and drive accountability across teams without direct authority.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to translate complex cross-functional dependencies into clear actions, decisions, and implementation plans.
• Highly organized, detail-oriented, proactive, and comfortable working across countries, cultures, and evolving local requirements.
• Flexibility to adjust working hours periodically to collaborate across global time zones, based on the countries and projects being supported.
• Familiarity with Workday, ADP Celergo, UKG Dimensions, and related payroll and timekeeping integrations.
• Experience supporting retail, hourly, or multi-location workforces.
• Knowledge of project management methodologies and tools; PMP, PRINCE2, Agile, or similar certification is a plus.
• Familiarity with change management, operational readiness, process standardization, and continuous-improvement approaches.

The base salary range for this position is $125,000 - $145,000 per year which represents the current range for the base salary for this exempt position. Please note that actual salaries will vary based on factors including but not limited to location, experience, and performance. As such, on occasion and when applicable, there is the possibility that the final, agreed-upon base salary may be outside of the upper end of the range. Please also note the range listed is just one component of the company’s total rewards package for exempt employees. Other rewards may include performance bonuses, long term incentives, a PTO policy, and many other progressive benefits.