Senior Manager, Payroll Operations

Right now, the best jobs are limited to people in a handful of the world’s wealthiest cities, yet brilliant people are everywhere. Driven to overturn the status quo and distribute opportunities equally around the world, Oyster launched its global employment platform to help companies hire, pay, and care for talent anywhere.

When it comes to global employment, we walk the walk. We’re proof that companies don't need an office to create a highly-engaged culture. Since the company’s inception in January 2020, Oyster has:

🌏 Created a fully-distributed, vibrant team of 400+ employees across 60+ countries

👩‍💻Featured in Forbes having ranked #9 in Flexjobs Top 30 Companies for remote jobs

🌈 Established a diverse leadership team and an employee base that’s 60% female

🏆 Achieved one of the highest employee engagement scores in its class

🦄 Raised $286 million to date, with a current valuation of $1.2 billion!

💚 B Corp status achieved in 2023

Our momentum speaks to the power of global employment—and we’re just getting started! If you want to change the world with Oyster and be empowered to work remotely while doing so, we’d love for you to apply!

Location: To create the best experience for this employee and to meet the business needs, this role requires you to be based within +/-2 UTC.

The Senior Manager, Payroll Operations is responsible for leading and scaling the operational management of Oyster’s in-house payroll operations. You will be responsible for ensuring payroll is delivered with best-in-class accuracy, compliance, and timeliness across multiple countries, while driving continuous process optimization and operational excellence.

You will oversee and develop a high-performing global team of payroll professionals, providing clear direction, coaching, and support while fostering a collaborative and accountable culture. You will ensure the team is fully equipped with the tools, resources, and training needed to operate effectively and to consistently deliver high-quality results. You will monitor performance, identify improvement opportunities, and partner with cross-functional teams to enhance workflows and drive operational excellence aligned with organizational goals.

You will be accountable for ensuring payroll processes, controls, and systems are built for global scale, audit readiness, and an exceptional experience for both customers and team members. You will lead the adoption of Oyster’s automated payroll tooling and drive continuous improvement across processes, controls, and compliance.

This role requires a strong people leader, a strategic operator, and a subject-matter expert who can balance day-to-day delivery with long-term scaling initiatives.

• Oversee the end-to-end execution of in-house payroll operations across multiple countries, ensuring best-in-class accuracy, timeliness, and compliance

• Lead and develop a high-performing global payroll team, providing clear direction, coaching, and support to foster a collaborative, accountable, and growth-oriented culture

• Set, monitor, and deliver against SLAs, OKRs, and KPIs, and effectively communicate performance and results to key stakeholders to ensure consistent, high-quality payroll delivery across all regions

• Serve as an escalation point and subject-matter expert both externally and internally to deliver a best-of-breed payroll experience to Oyster’s customers and team members, ensuring payroll queries are resolved within defined SLAs

• Maintain deep subject-matter expertise in multi-country payroll operations, ensuring regulatory requirements, compliance standards, and best practices are consistently met.

• Drive root-cause analysis (RCA) and continuous improvement initiatives to strengthen payroll controls, compliance, and operational efficiency

• Partner and coordinate cross-functionally e.g. with Product, Treasury, Payroll Transformation teams to optimize payroll processes and to enhance cross-functional workflows.

• Drive the adoption and continuous enhancement of Oyster’s internal payroll tools and automation capabilities to support scalable, streamlined operations

• Serve as a strategic operator capable of balancing day-to-day execution with long-term scaling initiatives that support Oyster’s evolving payroll operating model

• 8+ years experience of in-house payroll operations in a global context, including 4+ years in leadership roles managing payroll teams across multiple geographies

• Deep understanding of in-house payroll across multiple geographies, including end-to-end payroll delivery, payroll software and systems, local statutory frameworks

• Proven track record of leading the delivery and optimization of an exceptional payroll experience for a diverse and complex set of stakeholders

• Exceptional skills in stakeholder communication; proven experience in owning, setting and achieving best-in-class SLAs/KPIs

• Ability to develop highly effective and collaborative partnerships with Product, Transformation, Treasury teams etc to optimize processes and efficiency

• Proven experience implementing new country payrolls, delivering market expansion, payroll vendor migrations

• Track record of delivering payroll transformation and automation within a global payroll context

• Superb written and oral English communication skills

• A reliable home internet connection (or be able to get one)

• Fluent English language skills

Our values guide the work we do, the decisions we make, and the culture that makes us special. We elevate talent. 🙌  We build trust. 🤝 We thrive together. 🌍

Our mission is to create a more equal world—one global hire at a time. Everything we do ladders up to our mission—and that doesn’t just mean building software. We develop programs, participate in workshops, and create dedicated teams to ensure we successfully support companies and knowledge workers in this new world of work. 

We embrace asynchronous communication and collaborative work—and we share how we work in the Oyster Public HQ —to help other global teams learn from our experiences.

Different countries have different statutory benefits, different cultures have different norms, and different people have different needs! In order to best support and encourage our diverse team, we’ve created How YOU Work; a program of policies, practices, and perks to support your whole human experience as an employee at Oyster.

• Work from anywhere: Oyster is a borderless, HQ-less company. As long as your work gets done on time, your team has the support they need, and you're authorized to work where you live, the world is truly your Oyster.

• Paid time off: We’re all about taking breaks—we all need it. Oyster provides employees with 40 days off each year, which includes public/bank holidays and vacation/holiday leave (unless your country mandates more).

• Mental health support: We consider your mental health a top priority. We offer access to Plumm, a mental well-being service, to support your mental health.

• Wellbeing allowance:  Each month, Oyster will top up your ThanksBen wallet with a wellbeing allowance. You can get pretty much anything that your heart desires! ThanksBen offers a wide array of options for spending your wellbeing allowance. Check out their benefits catalogue here for inspiration.

• Flexible parental leave: Families are created in lots of different ways. Our parental leave policy applies to all employees who are becoming parents, regardless of how they become a parent. Oysters are eligible for a minimum of three months of paid parental leave and your job will be held for 12 months (or longer if required by local jurisdiction).

• WFH stipend: Stipend to spend on your laptop and any other equipment you need for your home office; we'll get you up and running in no time!

At Oyster, we celebrate a variety of perspectives and experiences and we’ve intentionally built our product and our company with an inclusive, global mindset. We know from experience that people from underrepresented groups often don’t apply for roles they don’t feel they meet all the criteria for. We’re committed to elevating talent by creating a trust-based environment where we can all thrive together. So if you think you have what it takes, but don’t necessarily check every single box, please consider applying. We’d love to hear how you might contribute to our mission and our team.

Oyster is committed to ensuring equal opportunity of employment for qualified persons with disabilities and actively fosters an inclusive work environment. If you require reasonable accommodations throughout the recruiting process, please email [email protected] with the subject line: Interview Accommodations.

Our available positions are published on our careers page and should you be invited to interview with us, our recruitment team will only ever contact you directly from an @oysterhr.com email address. We will never ask you to send us money as part of a job offer. If you receive a suspicious email relating to opportunities at Oyster from any other email domain where someone is claiming to be a part of our recruitment team, or are directed to anywhere other than www.oysterhr.com/careers to view our available jobs we encourage you to submit a report through our Compliance and Ethics Helpline.