Manager, Payroll Strategy & Projects

Manager, Payroll Projects & Strategy. Unique senior leadership opportunity with a large, fast-paced, complex, and stable Canadian company with a friendly and down-to-earth corporate culture. Great opportunity for someone with great mentorship and leadership abilities who wants to work with a collaborative and supportive team. Strategic leadership of the company’s overall payroll function. Base salary of $120K to $150K and solid total compensation.

Our client is a very well-established, interesting, and reputable company with operations throughout Canada and the US. The company has a dynamic culture and friendly people. Many people have worked at the company for 5+ years.

On behalf of our client, Swim Recruiting is looking for a new Payroll
Manager who will lead 2-3 direct reports (Team Leads) who in turn have their own direct reports, for a total payroll team size of over 12 people. This is the top Payroll position in the whole company, reporting into a senior HR leader. The total payroll size is around 4000, with a mix of salaried and hourly employees, across multiple Canadian provinces and multiple US states.

Using various payroll systems and time & attendance systems.

The Payroll Manager will NOT be regularly processing payroll themselves (other than to support their team very occasionally if needed during sick days, vacations, emergencies, etc.). This is NOT a hands-on position involved in the nitty gritty day-to-day of payroll operations. Instead, the Payroll Manager will be focused on overall strategic leadership of the payroll function for this large organization.

• Performance managing the payroll team (team members distributed across Canada and the US).
• Taking the lead on modernization and automation of payroll processes, and shifting the entire payroll function toward streamlined, efficient, and tech‑enabled processes.
• Analyzing the current payroll team structure and ensuring strategic succession planning and workforce planning.
• Reviewing existing payroll technologies and seeking out opportunities for system optimization or new system implementation.
• Representing the payroll function in leadership meetings with HR, Finance, and other functions.
• Managing post-acquisition payroll integration (this company is growing both organically and through M&A).

On behalf of our client, Swim Recruiting is looking for an experienced HR & Payroll leader with excellent people management experience and some expertise in Canadian payroll operations. Qualified candidates will have 10+ years of payroll (or very related- such as HR, total rewards) experience, including at least 5 years working in a formal people-management capacity.

• Strong, compassionate, and supportive leadership and mentorship capabilities.
• Excellent change management
  , process improvement
  , and automation experience, with the proven ability to lead a team through growth and transformation.
• Experience with workforce management and organizational development.
• Experience leading a team that processes a large, complex, high-volume, multi-provincial payroll, with diverse employee groups, including hourly, salaried, permanent, and casual.
• US payroll experience is considered a nice-to-have, but knowledge of Canadian payroll is the top priority.
• Payroll Technology:
• Experience with modern, enterprise-level payroll, time & attendance, and workforce management systems, such as Ceridian, UKG, Workday, ADP, etc.
• Experience leading payroll system projects is highly preferred (conversions, implementations, etc.).
• Warm, approachable, and professional communication skills (written and verbal).
• Professional payroll certification (PCP and/or PLP) is preferred.
• Additional qualifications such as MBA or Leadership certificates will be viewed very favourably.

Competitive base salary commensurate with payroll experience, skills, and qualifications, in the range of $120,000 to $150,000
, with the high end of the range reserved for candidates with very relevant experience who have all the desired qualifications.

Additionally, the Manager, Payroll Projects & Strategy will be eligible for an annual bonus, 4 weeks’ paid vacation, great health & dental benefits, a generous RRSP matching program, an employee share purchase program, relevant professional development support, and other perks. Please discuss your total compensation expectations in further detail with SWIM!

The company is headquartered in Burnaby, close to rapid transit. Full-time in office for the first few months to build relationship, and after that the Manager can choose to work from home 1 day/week, with flexibility based on work and personal life schedules. There will be some work travel in this role (in Canada and the US), no more than once a quarter, on average.

These work trips are typically scheduled months in advance, so the Manager can plan their personal/family life accordingly.

Swim Recruiting will be presenting the profiles of short-listed…