Senior Payroll Analyst

Purpose: The Senior Payroll Analyst supports U.S. and Canadian payroll processing to ensure accuracy and timely execution. This role is also responsible for maintaining compliance with applicable laws and regulations, preserving payroll records, and managing off-cycle payment processing.

Essential Functions:

• Examines each payroll run for accuracy, efficiency, and compliance; prepares summary report to the Director of Payroll on any apparent improvement opportunities
• Analyzes the payroll process and its efficiency over time, identifies areas of opportunity, and presents improvement plans; if improvement plans are considered viable, may be tasked with their implementation
• Prepares reports highlighting performance against targets and any identified issues, as well as trending payroll performance over time to encourage continuous improvement, including suggestions for long-term enhancements to the process
• Ensures compliance with all legal and regulatory requirements, including tax laws, wage and hour laws and other payroll-related regulations
• Verifies that work records have been captured correctly and completely; checks that all the performed work is a true reflection of the entered work records
• Validates bonuses, overtime, expense claims, or other ad hoc remuneration
• Verifies wage and salary data for errors/inconsistencies and highlights any issues
• Inspects mistakes and anomalies to determine whether they are systemic or resulting from faulty data input; flags systemic failures and liaises with the Director of Payroll to rectify them
• Performs regular spot checks to ensure deductions are accurate for each payroll run
• Audits the deductions process to determine and rectify the root cause of errors
• Oversees the distribution of paychecks and direct deposits
• Ensures payroll information updates such as promotions, salary band revisions, or annual salary increases, are entered into the HRMS by payroll staff; checks for accuracy

Reporting Relationship: The Senior Payroll Analyst reports directly to the Director of Payroll

Minimum Qualifications, Knowledge, Skills, and Work Environment:

• Education and Experience: The combination of education and professional experience must exceed 5 years:
  • In a technical role: Requires 3-5 years of payroll experience 
    • A bachelor’s degree in a program related to the functional area can count for 2 of the 5-year requirement
  • In the industry: 3-5 years of Hospitality, F&B and/or Retail experience
  • Must have previous experience processing high volume payroll

• Specialized Training:
  • Knowledge of US state, local, and federal tax regulations, as well as wage and hour regulations and laws
  • Knowledge of Canadian federal and provincial laws and regulations preferred
• Specialized Skillset/Competencies/Traits
  • Advanced knowledge of Microsoft Excel
  • Requires PeopleSoft payroll experience; experience with Success Factors & ADP preferred
  • Analytical mindset and keen eye for detail
  • Possesses strong business acumen and a forward-thinking approach to payroll management, with the ability to evaluate long-term impacts and drive alignment with organizational goals.
  • Demonstrated history of understanding the needs of the business, stakeholders, the employee population and individual circumstances
  • Demonstrated history of creating and maintaining positive work environments to achieve common goals
• Location: This role is located at the North America Support Center in Bethesda, MD