Payroll Director - Strategic Leadership & Transformation (Manchester, UK)

Payroll Director | Manchester City Centre - Relocation Package Available | Competitive Executive Package + Benefits

A career-defining payroll leadership opportunity with the autonomy, investment and influence to build what comes next.

Portfolio Payroll are partnering with an award-winning, global SaaS business to appoint an exceptional Payroll Director to lead its UK payroll operation from Manchester.

Trusted by more than 120,000 businesses worldwide, this is a technology-led organisation with ambitious plans for continued growth. Payroll sits at the heart of its proposition, making this a genuinely business-critical leadership appointment with the visibility and backing to make a significant impact.

This is not a role to simply maintain an established operation. You will have the mandate to shape its future.

You will set the strategic direction for a large-scale payroll function, lead and develop an established management team, and determine how technology, automation and operational excellence can create a more efficient, scalable and exceptional service.

Working closely with senior leadership, Product and Engineering, you will have the autonomy to challenge how things are done, influence investment and turn ideas into meaningful change. For a payroll leader who wants their expertise to carry real weight within a technology business, the scope is significant.

Why make the move?

This is an opportunity to take everything you have built throughout your payroll career and apply it somewhere you can have genuine influence. You will have:

• Real ownership of the strategy and future direction of a major payroll operation.
• Executive-level influence, with payroll recognised as critical to the organisation's growth and customer proposition.
• Investment in technology and innovation, with the opportunity to shape how automation transforms payroll delivery.
• Scale and complexity to make the role challenging, commercially important and rewarding.
• An established team to lead and develop, while building the culture and capability needed for the future.
• The backing to deliver change, rather than simply being asked to identify it.
• Long-term opportunity within an ambitious, growing global technology business.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and deliver a payroll strategy aligned with the organisation's long-term commercial objectives.
• Lead a large-scale payroll operation, developing and empowering the management team beneath you.

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• Create a high-performance culture built around accountability, development, innovation and exceptional service.
• Drive transformation across processes, systems and service delivery to improve efficiency and scalability.
• Identify and deliver opportunities for automation and technology enhancement alongside Product and Engineering.
• Maintain the highest standards of payroll compliance, governance, controls and risk management.
• Build strong relationships across the senior leadership team and influence strategic decision-making.
• Use performance and operational insight to continually challenge and improve the payroll proposition.

About You

We are looking for an accomplished payroll leader who combines deep technical credibility with strategic thinking, commercial awareness and exceptional people leadership.

You will bring:

• Proven experience at Payroll Director, Head of Payroll or equivalent senior leadership level.

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• Significant experience leading large-scale payroll operations and sizeable teams.
• Strong technical payroll expertise and an in-depth understanding of compliance and governance.
• A track record of leading transformation, operational improvement and meaningful change.
• The confidence and credibility to influence at executive and board level.
• A commercial mindset and an understanding of how payroll contributes to the wider customer and business proposition.
• Genuine enthusiasm for technology, automation and the future of payroll.
• A passion for developing people and creating high-performing leadership teams.

The right opportunity is worth moving for

We are looking for the best payroll leadership talent, wherever you are currently based. If this opportunity would mean making a move to Manchester, don't let location rule you out.

Candidates looking to relocate from elsewhere in the UK or internationally will be considered, with a relocation package available to support the move.

If you have reached the point in your career where you want more than responsibility for running payroll, and want the opportunity to shape its future, we would like to hear from you.