Payroll Transformation Specialist Europe

About Alvarez & Marsal

Alvarez & Marsal (A&M) is a global consulting firm with entrepreneurial, action and results-oriented professionals. We take a hands‑on approach to solving our clients' problems and assisting them in reaching their potential. Our culture celebrates independent thinkers and doers who positively impact our clients and shape our industry. The collaborative environment and engaging work—guided by A&M's core values of Integrity, Quality, Objectivity, Fun, Personal Reward, and Inclusive Diversity—are why our people love working at A&M.

The Payroll Transformation Specialist, based in London, will play a critical role in delivering payroll change initiatives across UK and Europe (specifically France and Germany) and complement the existing Payroll Operations team who manage business‑as‑usual payroll delivery and act as subject‑matter experts for country‑specific payroll requirements and implementations. You'll be focusing on project execution, systems enablement, and change delivery, ensuring solutions are practical, compliant, and successfully embedded into BAU operations.

This role requires payroll expertise combined with strong systems and project delivery experience across France, Germany and the UK. The successful candidate will partner closely with HR, Finance, IT, and external vendors to lead and support payroll implementations, optimisations, and transformation projects, with a strong focus on ADP Global View / Celergo.

This role is ideal for a payroll professional who enjoys working in complex environments, leading change, and improving payroll processes through technology and standardisation.

• Act as the Payroll subject‑matter lead within transformation and implementation projects, working alongside the central Project Management Office and EMEA Payroll Team.
• Work closely with the Payroll Operations (BAU) teams, who retain ownership of day‑to‑day payroll delivery to ensure payroll requirements, country nuances, statutory obligations, and operational processes are fully understood, designed, tested, and embedded within project solutions.
• Represent payroll interests across project forums, ensuring payroll impacts are visible, understood, and addressed throughout the project lifecycle.
• Provide governance and challenge to ensure payroll solutions are operationally viable and sustainable post‑go‑live.
• Coordinate payroll team inputs into projects, ensuring timely and high‑quality delivery of payroll activities, including requirements validation, testing, and readiness.
• Ensure effective handover of new processes, systems, and changes into BAU payroll operations, including documentation, controls, and knowledge transfer.
• Ensure all payroll scenarios, exceptions, statutory calculations, and country‑specific nuances are thoroughly tested and signed off.
• Review payroll outputs, reconciliations, and reports to confirm accuracy, compliance, and operational feasibility prior to go‑live.
• Provide hands‑on payroll systems expertise across ADP Global View and ADP Celergo, ensuring payroll configuration and integrations meet business and statutory requirements.
• Validate payroll data flows, interfaces, and downstream impacts between Workday, payroll providers, and other systems.
• Support issue resolution related to payroll design, configuration, or data during and after implementations.
• Partner with external payroll vendors to ensure payroll design and delivery meets agreed standards and country requirements.
• Identify and elevate payroll risks, gaps, or readiness concerns early and pragmatically to support mitigation planning.
• Ensure payroll controls, audit requirements, and compliance considerations are built into new solutions.
• Contribute to standardisation, documentation, and continuous improvement of global payroll practices.

• Minimum of 6 years of experience working in international teams with specifically France, Germany and UK hands‑on knowledge of payroll processing and country‑specific statutory requirements.
• Demonstrated experience supporting payroll transformation, system implementation, or change projects, acting as a payroll subject‑matter expert…