Associate Director of Payroll Operations and Shared Services

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Financial Administration (FAD) is dedicated to advancing Harvard University’s teaching and research mission by stewarding its resources; providing support, guidance, and consultation; ensuring compliance with university and federal guidelines; mitigating risk; pursuing operational excellence; and promoting the financial health of the University.

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• Welcome innovation, collaboration, and flexibility
• Enjoy our work, grow professionally, and aim for the extraordinary

Learn more about Financial Administration (harvard.edu) and our eight reporting units.

The Associate Director, Payroll Operations and Shared Services reports to the Director of Tax, Payroll, and Policy and leads central payroll processing, payroll operations compliance, and consistent payroll service delivery across central and shared services environments. The role serves as the University’s senior payroll operations and compliance subject matter expert, supporting accurate, timely, controlled, and policy-compliant payroll across schools and units.

This position manages the central payroll processing and customer service teams and establishes the standards, controls, escalation paths, training, and performance measures needed to support consistent payroll service delivery across central and emerging shared services environments. As the shared services model evolves, the role is expected to assume expanded direct management and/or functional oversight responsibilities for payroll shared services.

The role partners with Human Resources, school and unit finance leadership, HUIT, Labor Relations, the Office of the General Counsel, Tax Compliance, Internal Audit, and other central finance functions to resolve complex payroll matters, strengthen controls, support compliance, and improve the payroll service experience.

As part of the initial phase of the role, the Associate Director will play a key leadership role in the design and deployment of the Workforce Services Hub technology platform and payroll shared services operating model. This role will provide operational and compliance expertise, help shape service delivery and control frameworks, support stakeholder engagement and change management efforts, and contribute to a successful transition to and stabilization of the new model.

• Provides leadership, coaching, and payroll subject matter expertise to payroll and shared services stakeholders.
• Establishes payroll procedures, controls, documentation standards, and compliance monitoring practices.
• Partners with HR, HUIT, Labor Relations, school and unit finance teams, Tax Compliance, Financial Policy, OGC, Risk Management, and Internal Audit to resolve payroll issues and implement changes.
• Improves payroll service delivery through workflow design, service metrics, root-cause analysis, automation, workload balancing, and standardization.
• Supports shared services design, implementation, change management, stakeholder communication, training, transition planning, and stabilization.
• Manages payroll-related risk by identifying control gaps, monitoring recurring issues, coordinating remediation, and supporting escalation protocols.
• Partners with HUIT and functional stakeholders on payroll systems, reporting, data integrity, access controls, integrations, and testing.

Basic Qualifications are the minimum threshold a candidate must meet in order to be considered for this role.

For consideration please include a cover letter.

• Minimum of 10 years of progressively responsible payroll operations, payroll compliance, finance operations, or shared…