Director of Payroll

Director of Payroll

• Job Title: Director
• Location: System Business Office
• Department: Payroll
• Req #:
• Status: Salaried
• Shift: Day
• Pay Range: $ - $ per year
• Category: Accounting / Finance
• Facility: RWJBarnabas Health Corporate Services
• Location (address): 2 Crescent Place, Oceanport, NJ 07757

The Director, Payroll Operations is responsible for leading the day-to-day execution of payroll operations across the organization, ensuring payroll is processed accurately, timely, and in full compliance with federal, state, and local requirements, organizational policy, and internal control standards.

This role provides strategic and operational leadership over payroll processing, validation, balancing, issue resolution, and service delivery, while also maintaining a strong focus on continuous improvement, operational discipline, risk mitigation, and team development.

The Director serves as the operational leader for payroll execution and is accountable for establishing a high-performing, control-focused environment that supports payroll accuracy, regulatory compliance, audit readiness, and enterprise scalability.

This role partners closely with Payroll Tax, Employee Experience, HR, Finance, Internal Audit, Compliance, and Information Technology to ensure the payroll function operates effectively and supports broader organizational goals.

The ideal candidate brings deep functional payroll expertise, strong leadership capability, a thorough understanding of and internal control frameworks, and the ability to translate payroll data into meaningful operational metrics and performance accountability.

• Minimum of 10 years of progressive payroll experience in complex, multi-entity, high-volume environments
• Minimum of 5 years of leadership experience managing payroll operations teams, including people leaders
• Demonstrated experience leading end-to-end payroll operations in a large, complex organization with multiple pay groups, locations, legal entities, and employee populations
• Strong knowledge of payroll processing, wage and hour considerations, payroll controls, reconciliations, and compliance requirements
• Demonstrated experience supporting
  -controlled environments and interacting with internal and external auditors
• Experience developing operational metrics, dashboards, and performance reporting for payroll
• Experience leading process improvement, standardization, and control enhancement initiatives
• Experience with enterprise payroll and timekeeping systems, such as People Soft, Workday, UKG, ADP, SAP, Oracle, or similar platforms
• Strong proficiency in Excel and payroll reporting/analysis tools

• Direct and oversee end-to-end payroll operations for all assigned payrolls, entities, and employee populations
• Ensure payrolls are processed accurately, timely, and in accordance with established payroll calendars, cutoff schedules, and service level expectations
• Lead the review and execution of all major payroll operational activities, including payroll input validation, audit review, balancing, funding coordination, reconciliation, confirmation, and final transmission
• Establish and maintain operational standards that support consistent payroll execution across all cycles
• Monitor workload distribution, staffing alignment, and processing readiness to ensure operational continuity and timely completion of payroll deliverables
• Serve as the primary escalation point for operational payroll issues, ensuring risks are assessed and resolved promptly and appropriately
• Maintain visibility into operational dependencies, deadlines, risks, and bottlenecks that may affect payroll execution

• Ensure payroll operations are conducted in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local wage and hour laws, payroll tax requirements, company policy, and collective internal control standards.
• Lead the design, execution, and ongoing monitoring of payroll operational controls to support compliance, audit readiness, and risk mitigation.
• Maintain a strong working knowledge of requirements and ensure payroll controls are dit and compliance expectations.
• Partner with Internal Audit, Compliance, HR, Finance, and external auditors on payroll-related reviews, control testing, walkthroughs, and remediation activities.
• Ensure segregation of duties is maintained across payroll operations and that access, approvals, validations, and exception handling align with internal control requirements.
• Oversee the identification, documentation, and remediation of control gaps, process failures, or compliance issues impacting payroll operations.
• Support development and maintenance of standard operating procedures, process narratives, risk/control matrices, and desk-level procedures for all critical payroll processes.
• Ensure payroll operational practices support confidentiality, data privacy, and secure handling of employee information.

• Establish strong audit and…