Senior Payroll Specialist (APAC)

ABOUT THE ROLE

We are looking for an experienced and detail-oriented Senior Payroll Specialist (APAC) to join our team in Sydney. In this role, you will take full ownership of our APAC payroll operations, primarily focusing on our growing Australian footprint (~300 employees) alongside smaller regional entities across Asia.

This is a high-visibility, technical role. You will initially run Australian payroll using Employment Hero while collaborating with third-party accounting partners across the region. Concurrently, you will play a central role in our migration to Workday, transitioning our Australian payroll fully in-house for a targeted July go-live. Once live, you will own the end-to-end processing directly in Workday.

This position demands strong technical knowledge of Australian taxation, equity reporting (pre/post-IPO), salary packaging, shadow payroll, and termination compliance.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

1. End-to-End Payroll Operations & System Migration

• Support the transition of Australian payroll from Employment Hero to Workday (target go-live: July), assisting with data validation, UAT, and parallel payroll runs.
• Once implemented, take full ownership of processing end-to-end payroll directly within Workday.
• Oversee and coordinate smaller regional payrolls across Asia, working closely with local third-party providers.
• Act as the primary point of contact for all employee payroll enquiries, delivering exceptional employee support.

1. Specialised Calculations, Compensation & Benefits

• Incentive Compensation: Verify bonus payments and calculate appropriate foreign currency conversions for payroll integration.
• Terminations: Calculate and process all termination payments (voluntary, involuntary, redundancies, PILON, annual leave accruals), ensuring accurate tax treatments, tax-free thresholds, and Employment Termination Payment (ETP) codes are strictly applied.
• Benefits & Expense Reimbursements: Review and administer vendor-based employee expense reimbursements, executing accurate gross-up calculations for benefits, where applicable.
• Salary Packaging: Manage the end-to-end setup, ongoing deductions, and termination adjustments for novated leases.
• Superannuation: Manage employee super choice elections, including setting up and validating new superannuation funds directly in Workday.

1. Global Mobility & Shadow Payroll

• Partner with our Global Mobility team and external tax partners to process complex shadow payroll calculations for inbound and outbound cross-border remote/mobile employees.
• Ensure correct withholding and reporting of PAYG and state payroll tax for international assignees.

1. Tax, Equity (ESS) & Statutory Compliance

• Manage equity tax reporting for RSUs and stock options, including verifying and filing annual Employee Share Scheme (ESS) statements and reports with the ATO.
• Reconcile, verify, and complete all month-end and year-end statutory requirements, including Single Touch Payroll (STP Phase 2) finalisations, Superannuation Guarantee contributions, and state-by-state payroll tax returns.
• Perform regular payroll audits, support Australian Government statutory payroll reporting, reconciliations, and variance analyses in close partnership with the Finance and Accounting teams.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• 5+ years of hands-on Australian payroll experience managing high-volume corporate payrolls (300+ employees).
• Australian Regulatory Mastery: Deep functional knowledge of Australian employment standards (Fair Work Act, NES, Modern Awards), ATO withholding rules, Superannuation Guarantee, and state payroll taxes.
• Equity Compensation: Proven experience reporting RSUs and stock compensation in Australia, ideally across both pre-IPO and post-IPO environments (including ESS annual reporting).
• Terminations & ETPs: Extensive practical experience calculating complex terminations (genuine redundancies, invalidity, notice periods) and applying proper ATO tax caps and treatments.
• Salary Packaging & Benefits: Direct experience setting up and administering novated leases and superannuation funds.
• Global Mobility: Direct experience running shadow payroll for inbound and outbound cross-border employees.
• Employee-Facing Support: Demonstrated experience serving as the lead, employee-facing point of contact for complex payroll and benefits enquiries.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience processing payroll in Workday or other cloud-based payroll systems.
• Experience coordinating small international payrolls across the broader APAC region (e.g. South Korea, Japan, Taiwan).
• Experience in supporting WGEA reporting.