Frontline work keeps the world running. Restaurants, hospitals, schools, nurseries, airlines, stores, emergency services. Together they employ 80% of the global workforce, over 3 billion people, and they're among the hardest businesses anywhere to run. By-the-minute scheduling, HR and payroll make them far more operationally complex than the average office, yet just 1% of venture funding has ever gone to software built for them.
Rising costs, wage increases, labour shortages and tighter regulation have made fixing that urgent. Sona is the AI-native workforce management platform for frontline organisations, with agents that match staffing to real demand and take the admin load off managers. That's a $500bn+ market the software industry has mostly walked past.
We've raised over $100M from N47, Felicis, Gradient and Northzone, signed more than 100 enterprise customers across the UK and US, and opened offices in London, New York, Austin and Lisbon. More on working at Sona here.
About the Role
We're growing our payroll bureau fast and looking for a Payroll Manager to lead a team of Payroll Specialists, driving accuracy, compliance and client experience across their portfolio. This is a people-management role: you'll coach and develop your team, own escalations, and stay hands-on with payroll when it matters.
You'll also be a driving force behind automation and continuous improvement, using AI to cut manual effort and building best-practice, auditable payroll flows as you go.
Responsibilities
Lead, coach and develop a team of Senior Payroll Specialists, Payroll Specialists and Payroll Assistants, signing off their output before it reaches clients
Act as senior point of contact for your team's client payrolls, stepping in hands-on for onboarding or escalations
Advise clients directly on legislative and regulatory change, and keep the team compliant with a regular gap analysis
Own the team's support ticket queue and drive continuous improvement against KPIs and SLAs
Lead incident resolution and root-cause analysis, escalating major issues to the Head of Payroll Bureau
Identify and implement AI and automation opportunities, and coach the team to build their own
Ensure Tax Year-End processing is accurate and on time, and review the team's BACS payments
Requirements
Proven, hands-on experience as a Payroll Manager, including in bureau/outsourced environments with enterprise clients
Strong track record coaching and developing a payroll team, combining technical knowledge with people management
Comfortable managing the variability of multiple payrolls across different industries within a bureau
Strong background in payroll compliance and audit, with good working knowledge of payroll/HR systems and GL structures
Bonus: Republic of Ireland payroll experience, CIPP qualification (or working towards one), demonstrable use of AI to automate payroll work
Benefits
Salary: £70,000 - £80,000
Hybrid working - 2+ days/week in our London office (Soho)
Share options
35 days annual leave (25 days standard plus 10 flexible public holiday days)
Extra day of leave for every year of service
Pension contributions matched up to 5%
Comprehensive health insurance
Enhanced parental leave & pay
Salary sacrifice childcare scheme (Workplace Nursery)
Annual all expenses paid team retreats
The latest Macbook and equipment budget for your home office
Professional development budget
Unlimited free books
Note: this represents a typical benefits package for a UK-based, full-time employee. Exact details may vary based on location and employment type but we try to be as fair as possible to all of our team members. Please ask your contact in the Talent team to clarify the available benefits for you.
Skills Required
- Proven hands-on experience as a Payroll Manager
- Experience working in payroll bureau or outsourced environments with enterprise clients
- Strong track record coaching and developing a payroll team
- Strong technical payroll knowledge combined with people-management experience
- Experience managing multiple payrolls across different industries
- Strong background in payroll compliance and audit
- Working knowledge of payroll and HR systems
- Working knowledge of general ledger structures
- Republic of Ireland payroll experience
- CIPP qualification or progress toward one
- Demonstrable use of AI to automate payroll work
What We Do
The employee empowerment revolution has arrived. Sona is the modern app for the new era of frontline work, combining powerful productivity tools with a sleek, simple and intuitive user experience. Empower your people to see their schedule at a glance, book holiday from anywhere, pick up extra shifts, communicate with colleagues, find information and give feedback instantly. Empower your managers to slash admin time by 5 hours per week, drastically reduce agency and payroll spending, and elevate your employee experience. Sona is transforming the way trailblazing organisations across health and social care, retail, logistics, charities and non-profits manage their teams and budgets and engage and retain their staff.
