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Lambda, a leader in AI cloud infrastructure serving tens of thousands of customers, is seeking a Senior Workday Payroll Architect to own the Payroll, Time Tracking, and Absence modules during a critical migration from Rippling to Workday. This is a hands-on configuration role reporting to the People Technology pillar within Business Technology.
You will serve as the functional lead and resident expert for Workday Payroll, Time Tracking, and Absence, responsible for end-to-end implementation from design through go-live and steady-state operations. You will partner with Finance, People, and Payroll Operations to ensure every calculation, accrual, and payment is correct across US and international workforces.
Key Responsibilities:
- Lead Workday Payroll, Time Tracking, and Absence implementation: drive design sessions, own configuration decisions, build and test the tenant with the implementation partner, and sign off on readiness for cutover, parallel testing, and hypercare.
- Configure and maintain US & Canada payroll in Workday: pay groups, earnings and deductions, pay component groups, federal/state/local tax setup, garnishments, payroll accounting, and period-end/year-end processing (W-2s, quarterly filings).
- Design and operate international payroll flows between Workday and global payroll providers (Workday Global Payroll Connect or PECI/PICOF-based integrations): payroll input files, results return, GL posting, and reconciliation.
- Configure Time Tracking for hourly and non-exempt populations: work schedules, time entry codes, time calculations (overtime, meal/rest break compliance, shift differentials), approvals, and state-specific rules.
- Build and maintain Absence plans across US and international populations: flexible PTO, sick leave accruals by jurisdiction, statutory leave, and leave-of-absence types with correct eligibility, accrual, carryover, and payout rules.
- Own payroll-adjacent integrations (benefits carriers, 401k, tax filing, equity compensation, GL to NetSuite) and data validation to keep Workday, payroll results, and the general ledger in agreement.
- Partner with Payroll Operations and Accounting on every payroll cycle: retro calculations, off-cycle payments, pre- and post-payroll audits, and root-cause analysis.
- Design payroll processes and Workday security to satisfy SOX ITGC and payroll control requirements: segregation of duties, approval workflows, audit trails, and evidence capture.
- Stay current on Workday's semi-annual releases, assess impact, run regression testing, and adopt new functionality.
- Write documentation, train HR/managers/Payroll, and build reports and dashboards for self-service.
Requirements:
- 10+ years in HRIS or payroll systems, with at least 6+ years hands-on configuring Workday Payroll, Time Tracking, and Absence.
- Have taken at least one Workday Payroll implementation live as the functional lead, ideally with Time Tracking and Absence in the same phase.
- Fluent in payroll business processes, the calculation engine (calculated fields, pay component logic, custom reports), tax configuration, retro processing, and payroll accounting.
- Workday Payroll, Time Tracking, or Absence certification (or equivalent partner experience) strongly preferred.
- Experience running or integrating international payroll through Workday (Global Payroll Connect partners or custom integrations); understand data, timing, and reconciliation challenges across multiple countries and providers.
- Deep knowledge of US payroll fundamentals: multi-state taxation, FLSA, wage and hour rules (especially California), garnishments, imputed income, equity compensation and RSU withholding, and year-end processing.
- Experience operating in a SOX or audit-facing environment; understand segregation of duties, approvals, and evidence requirements in payroll.
- Thorough testing discipline, strong documentation practices, and commitment to parallel runs and reconciliation before production payroll changes.
- Ability to translate between Payroll, People, Accounting, and Engineering teams.
- Comfortable with ambiguity and velocity at a pre-IPO company; adaptable to changing requirements, fast headcount growth, and new country openings.
- Enthusiastic, detail-oriented mindset: when a payroll result looks off, you investigate until you find the root cause.
Nice to Have:
- Experience with Workday HCM, Benefit, and Compensation configurations.
- Experience migrating from Rippling or another all-in-one HR/payroll platform to Workday.
- Workday Pro certifications in Payroll, Time Tracking, Absence, or Integrations.
- Experience with international payroll providers (ADP Celergo, CloudPay, Papaya Global, Deel) and employer-of-record arrangements.
- Familiarity with NetSuite, Okta, Lumos, Workato, BigQuery.
- IPO readiness experience, including payroll control design and equity compensation processing.
- Experience using AI tooling to accelerate testing, documentation, or reconciliation.
