Global Payroll Manager

About This Role

This newly created role sits between the Global Head of Payroll and Safeguard Global's regional payroll organizations, providing the day-to-day operating layer that unifies payroll delivery across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. The Global Payroll Manager manages three Regional Payroll Leads directly, holding their teams accountable for accurate, compliant, and timely payroll for both global payroll and EOR clients. The role acts as the connective tissue between regional execution and global strategy, translating company-wide standards, KPIs, and transformation initiatives into consistent regional practice, and surfacing regional risk, capacity, and performance issues up to the Global Head of Payroll.

Responsibilities

• Manage and develop the Regional Payroll Leadership for Americas, EMEA, and APAC, ensuring each region has the structure, staffing, and processes to deliver accurate and on-time payroll
• Own global consistency of payroll operations across regions, standardizing processes, controls, and escalation paths so clients receive the same quality of service regardless of geography
• Serve as Tier 3 escalation owner for complex payroll issues (input/output processing, invoicing, benefits administration, EOR entity management) that regional teams cannot resolve independently
• Partner with the Global Head of Payroll on the Payroll Shared Services KPI program, monitoring accuracy rates, error attribution, and SLA performance across all regional teams, and driving corrective action where targets are missed
• Ensure multi-country compliance across all supported jurisdictions, working with Governance and regional leads to keep pace with changing statutory, tax, and labor requirements
• Support EOR and Global Pay payroll delivery, ensuring regional teams correctly execute entity-specific payroll, statutory filings, and worker payments in line with each country's requirements
• Act as a key stakeholder in payroll transformation and tooling initiatives (e.g., system migrations, process automation), representing regional operational needs and driving adoption once changes go live
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Implementation, Client Support Services (CS), Sales, and Governance to ensure smooth client onboarding, ongoing service delivery, and issue resolution
• Contribute payroll operating cost and delivery input into pricing and margin discussions for new and existing client engagements
• Report regularly to the Global Head of Payroll on regional performance, risks, capacity, and resourcing needs; recommend organizational or process changes to improve service delivery

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Finance, Human Resources, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience
• 8+ years of progressive payroll experience, including multi-country or global payroll operations