Payroll Team Leader in Epsom, Surrey

Location: Epsom, Surrey

Office-based through probation, moving to hybrid after successful completion

Full-time

We are looking for an experienced Payroll Team Leader to lead the accurate, compliant and timely delivery of a UK in-house payroll service within a large engineering and infrastructure organisation. This role is ideal for someone who has built their career in calm, controlled payroll operations and is ready to bring that discipline into a structured, multinational environment. You will sit at the intersection of hands-on payroll delivery and real team leadership, owning the day-to-day payroll operation, maintaining strong governance and controls, supporting legislative and benefit changes, and providing clear reporting to senior HR stakeholders.

The Role

As Payroll Team Leader, you will lead the end-to-end UK payroll cycle, ensuring employees are paid accurately and on time while supporting the payroll team with workload control, priorities, deadlines and escalations. You will also play a key role in payroll governance, National Minimum Wage compliance, benefits processing, reconciliations, reporting and continuous improvement.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the end-to-end delivery of the UK in-house payroll cycle
• Manage the payroll team’s daily workload, priorities and deadlines
• Provide guidance, coaching and escalation support to payroll colleagues
• Own payroll validation, reconciliations, exception checks, approvals and audit controls
• Ensure compliance with UK payroll legislation, HMRC requirements, PAYE, National Insurance, statutory payments and company policy
• Monitor National Minimum Wage compliance, especially around salary sacrifice and flexible benefit deductions
• Process and oversee the payroll treatment of flexible benefits
• Partner with Reward, Benefits, HR Operations, HR Business Partners, Finance, pensions and systems teams
• Produce payroll service reporting covering accuracy, timeliness, exceptions, service levels, incidents, risks and improvement actions
• Act as the escalation point for complex payroll queries
• Maintain strong process documentation, controls and audit trails
• Support year-end and statutory payroll activity
• Identify opportunities to improve payroll efficiency, controls and data quality

What we are looking for

• Proven hands-on experience delivering end-to-end UK payroll
• Experience in an in-house or similarly complex payroll environment
• Strong knowledge of UK payroll legislation, including PAYE, NI, statutory payments, RTI and National Minimum Wage principles
• Experience leading or managing payroll colleagues
• Strong workload control, coaching and escalation handling experience
• Experience with payroll-related benefits, salary sacrifice or flexible benefit schemes
• Confident stakeholder management and payroll performance reporting skills
• Strong attention to detail, numerical ability and deadline discipline
• Good Excel skills and confidence working across payroll systems, HRIS platforms and employee data

Strong Differentiators

• CIPP qualification or recognised payroll training
• Governance, audit and controls experience, including SOX or similar compliance environments
• Experience across pensions payroll, including DB, DC and auto-enrolment
• Ability to translate payroll complexity into clear reporting for Finance, HR and senior leadership
• Experience with process improvement, payroll migrations or fixing fragile payroll operations
• Familiarity with Workday, Oracle, SAP, Dayforce, ADP, Zellis or similar systems

Why this role

• Stable, well-established organisation with a structured HR operating model
• Real ownership of a meaningful part of the payroll cycle
• Direct visibility to senior stakeholders
• Opportunity to bring calm, controlled leadership into a business that values governance and payroll accuracy

For a confidential conversation, please get in touch to discuss the opportunity in more detail.