Senior Payroll Practitioner in Manchester

Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits

Location: Manchester Store Support Centre and Home, Manchester, M4 3AL

Contract type: Permanent

Business area: People

Closing date: 03 September 2026

Requisition ID: 400076697

We'd all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That's waiting for you at Sainsbury's. We're the first to say we do HR differently here. For a start, we work as business partners and specialists. Whether that's making sure nearly 150,000 colleagues are paid on time, or shaping a strategy that helps us attract the right people, put them in the right place, and unlock their potential. This is a fast-moving business, and our policies and rewards evolve with it. That's why we're as flexible as we can be about where and when you work. We're also flexible about your future. There's always room to move up or across, if that's what you want. We really value different perspectives, so there's no one opinion, no single path, and yours matters.

Joining the Payroll Operations team at Sainsbury's offers the opportunity to play a crucial role in ensuring the accurate and timely production of payroll services across the organisation. As a Senior Payroll Practitioner, you will be part of a dynamic team dedicated to delivering high-quality service to colleagues throughout Sainsbury's, including retail, store support centres, and distribution. With a focus on professionalism and excellence, this role provides a platform for continuous learning and development, where you can contribute to maintaining compliance, building strong relationships, and making a real impact on the payroll operations of a multi-channel, multi-brand business.

What you'll do

As a Senior Payroll Practitioner at Sainsbury's, you will be an integral part of the Payroll Operations team, ensuring the accurate and timely production and administration of payroll services across the organisation. Your responsibilities will include:

• Validating and reviewing remote input to the payroll system
• Responding to error messages
• Preparing data uploads
• Inputting payroll-related data
• Undertaking pay corrections
• Providing expert support to the AskHR team for effective handling of pay queries

Additionally, you will be expected to maintain compliance with statutory requirements, company policies, and data protection regulations, while building strong relationships with HR Operations teams and constantly seeking ways to improve processes and service delivery. Your success in this role will be measured by the quality and timeliness of payroll data input, adherence to policies and procedures, maintenance of data confidentiality, and adherence to service level agreements to ensure high levels of customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.

Who you are

As a Senior Payroll Practitioner at Sainsbury's, you are a dedicated professional with a thorough understanding of payroll service delivery, statutory compliance, and company policies. With expertise in accurately processing payroll data and ensuring adherence to authorisation procedures, you excel in maintaining high standards of service delivery and customer satisfaction. Your ability to build strong relationships with HR Operations teams, drive process improvements, and uphold data confidentiality demonstrates your commitment to excellence in payroll administration and continuous improvement within a dynamic and collaborative environment.

Demonstrable experience of payroll administration and payroll processing, including inputting, validating or reviewing payroll data accurately and in line with processing deadlines. Proven ability to identify, investigate and resolve payroll errors, warnings or incomplete data, escalating issues appropriately where required. Working knowledge of statutory payroll requirements and deductions, such as tax codes, student loans, court orders, attachment of earnings or other regulatory payroll inputs. Experience using payroll, HR or workforce management systems, alongside Excel or similar tools, to process uploads, data entry or payroll-related calculations. Demonstrable understanding of payroll controls, authorisation processes and data protection requirements, including maintaining colleague confidentiality and adhering to policy and procedure.

We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer, so you'll be welcomed whoever you are and wherever you work. Around here, there's always the chance to try something new-whether that's as part of an evolving team or somewhere else across the business - and we take development seriously and promise to support you. We also recognise and celebrate colleagues when they go the extra mile and, where possible, offer flexible working. When you join our team, we'll also offer you an amazing range of benefits. Here are some of them:

• Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to get 10% off at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat after 4 weeks. This increases to 15% off at Sainsbury's every Friday and Saturday and 15% off at Argos every pay day.
• Our pensions scheme and life cover.
• Performance-related bonus up to 5% of salary, depending on how we perform.
• Annual holiday allowance, and you can buy additional holiday.
• Season ticket loans, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, pay advance (where you can access some of your pay before pay day) as well as access to a great range of discounts from hundreds of other retailers.
• Employee assistance programme.
• Up to 26 weeks' pay for maternity or adoption leave and up to 4 weeks' pay for paternity leave.

Please see www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply). Please note, due to the volume of applications we receive, our roles may close early.