Lead Payroll Specialist (Payroll Bureau)

Location: Hybrid in Irvine, CA; Austin, TX; San Francisco Bay Area, CA; Denver, CO; or Akron, OH. Employees are expected to work onsite each Tuesday and Wednesday.

Salary: $37.88–$56.83 per hour.

Company

hirify.global provides software that helps more than 50,000 restaurant locations manage finances, operations, and people.

What you will do

• Manage recurring payroll activities for assigned customers, coordinating inputs, deadlines, approvals, corrections, and follow-up.
• Prepare or import payroll transactions, review calculations and variances, reconcile results, perform audits, and investigate discrepancies.
• Serve as the primary operational customer contact by explaining payroll results, communicating action items, and supporting final approval and submission.
• Support onboarding, transitions, post-payroll reporting, off-cycle requests, and additional services such as ACA, workers’ compensation, or 401(k) reporting when within scope.
• Develop workflows, playbooks, controls, documentation, service standards, reporting, and escalation paths for the growing managed-service offering.
• Collaborate with Implementation, Tax/Compliance, Customer Success, Support, Payments, Finance, Product, and Engineering while protecting sensitive information and improving processes with approved automation and AI tools.

Requirements

• 5+ years of hands-on payroll processing or payroll operations experience with ownership of complex payroll activities and customer outcomes.
• Experience independently managing payroll across multiple customers, entities, locations, pay groups, or states with competing calendars and deadlines.
• Strong knowledge of the end-to-end payroll cycle, including earnings, deductions, taxes, direct deposit, reporting, reconciliation, corrections, and off-cycle processing.
• Working knowledge of multi-state payroll tax and wage-and-hour concepts, including when specialist interpretation or escalation is required.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, organizational, and attention-to-detail skills, including variance investigation, root-cause analysis, confidentiality, accurate documentation, and control discipline.
• Excellent customer communication and relationship-management skills, including explaining payroll concepts, communicating required actions, managing expectations, and maintaining confidence during difficult situations.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Excel for payroll analysis and reconciliation, including formulas, lookups, pivot tables, and data validation; ability to learn payroll systems and internal tools quickly.
• Ability to develop or improve procedures, identify process gaps, work independently and collaboratively in a deadline-driven environment, and adapt to evolving processes and priorities.
• Curiosity and hands-on experience using generative AI, with judgment to understand its limitations and verify outputs.

Nice to have

• Certified Payroll Professional (CPP) certification.
• Payroll bureau, managed-service, or payroll outsourcing experience, including customer portfolio or service-delivery ownership.
• Experience as a payroll lead, senior specialist, or subject-matter expert, including mentoring, escalations, or payroll review.
• Experience developing payroll procedures, improving workflows, establishing controls, or launching or scaling a new service.
• Experience with R365 Payroll or comparable payroll platforms; hospitality, restaurant, or distributed workforce experience.
• Experience with quarter-end or year-end payroll, system transitions, reporting tools, or approved workflow automation.
• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Accounting, Finance, Human Resources, or a related field, or equivalent work experience.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid work model with required onsite collaboration each Tuesday and Wednesday.
• Medical benefits fully paid for employees.
• 401(k) with matching, equity option grant, unlimited PTO, and company holidays.
• Wellness initiatives and a culture focused on ownership, collaboration, continuous improvement, learning, and initiative.