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Salary: GBP 55,000 - 65,000 / annual
Sona is an AI-native workforce management platform serving frontline organizations (restaurants, hospitals, schools, airlines, etc.) across the UK and US. The company has raised over $100M and operates offices in London, New York, Austin, and Lisbon.
You will lead a team of Payroll Specialists and Assistants within Sona's rapidly growing payroll bureau. This is a hands-on people-management role combining team leadership with direct client engagement and operational excellence.
Key responsibilities include:
- Leading, coaching, and developing a team of Senior Payroll Specialists, Payroll Specialists, and Payroll Assistants, with sign-off authority on all team output before client delivery
- Serving as the senior point of contact for your team's client payrolls, stepping in hands-on for onboarding, escalations, and complex issues
- Advising clients directly on legislative and regulatory changes, conducting regular compliance gap analyses, and ensuring team adherence to all payroll regulations
- Owning the team's support ticket queue, driving continuous improvement against KPIs and SLAs, and leading incident resolution and root-cause analysis
- Identifying and implementing AI and automation opportunities to reduce manual effort, coaching the team to build their own automation solutions
- Ensuring accurate and timely Tax Year-End processing and reviewing all BACS payments
You'll bring proven experience as a Payroll Manager in bureau or outsourced environments with enterprise clients. You have a strong track record coaching and developing payroll teams, combining deep technical payroll knowledge with people management skills. You're comfortable managing multiple payrolls across different industries and have a strong background in payroll compliance, audit, and payroll/HR systems. Bonus qualifications include Republic of Ireland payroll experience, CIPP certification (or progress toward it), and demonstrated use of AI to automate payroll work.
