About the Role:

The Role: Senior Payroll Specialist

About the Role: The Senior Payroll Specialist is responsible for end-to-end ownership of India payroll operations, ensuring accurate, timely, and fully compliant payroll delivery across assigned India entities. The role operates within S&P; Global's Global Pay Services operating model and provides deep subject-matter expertise, statutory governance support, and control oversight for India payroll.

This role acts as a senior escalation point for complex payroll, statutory, and compliance matters, partners closely with People Services, Finance, Tax, Mobility, and external payroll vendors, and plays a key role in payroll governance, risk mitigation, process optimization, and transformation initiatives, without direct people management responsibilities.

Key Responsibilities

Payroll Operations India

- Own and execute end-to-end monthly India payroll processing across legal entities, including regular payroll, bonuses, off-cycle payrolls, leave encashments, arrears, recoveries, and final settlements.
- Perform detailed payroll reviews, variance analysis, exception handling, and sign-off readiness checks prior to approvals.
- Ensure payroll activities are completed within defined cut-off timelines, approval controls, and governance frameworks.
- Independently resolve complex payroll exceptions and root-cause issues with significant employee, financial, or compliance impact.

Statutory Compliance & Governance India

- Own compliance execution for all Indian payroll statutory requirements, including:
- Income Tax (TDS on salary, projections, quarterly withholding tax returns, Annual withholding tax forms etc)
- Provident Fund (EPFO UAN lifecycle, ECR filings, exits, contributions)
- ESIC, Professional Tax, Labour Welfare Fund (LWF)

- Manage annual activities such as investment declaration windows,



proof verification, tax recalculations, year-end processing, and true-ups.
- Independently handle and support responses to statutory notices, audits, inspections, and regulatory queries from Income Tax, EPFO, and other authorities.
- Identify statutory and compliance risks and implement preventive and corrective controls.

Payroll Accounting, Controls & Reporting

- Partner with Finance to ensure accurate payroll GL postings, reconciliations, accruals, and month-end close support.
- Prepare, validate, and review monthly payroll reports, statutory summaries, defect logs, and control evidence in line with Global Pay Services SOPs.
- Support internal and external audits, including SOX and compliance reviews, through documentation, data validation, and timely responses.

Stakeholder & Vendor Collaboration

- Act as a key payroll escalation point for India payroll matters with People Services, HR Business Partners, Finance, Tax, and Mobility teams.
- Collaborate with external payroll vendors to resolve discrepancies, drive accuracy improvements, and ensure SLA adherence.
- Provide explicit, professional communication to address employee-impacting payroll queries and issues through approved ticketing platforms.

Systems, Controls & Continuous Improvement

- Ensure accuracy, integrity, and confidentiality of payroll data in Workday and payroll vendor systems.
- Identify recurring payroll defects and implement root-cause fixes, standardization,



and automation opportunities.
- Contribute to process optimization, transformation initiatives, labour code readiness, and adoption of new-age technologies (e.g., Power BI, AI-enabled validations).
- Support continuous improvement initiatives aligned with Global Payroll governance and control frameworks

Qualifications:

Required

- 7+ years of hands-on India payroll experience with deep operational and statutory expertise.
- Strong knowledge of Indian payroll laws, tax regulations, and statutory compliance requirements.
- Knowledge of changes proposed in new Labour Code and handling of F&F; within 2 working days (as per new Labour Code).
- Experience handling payroll for large employee populations in a complex or GCC/shared services environment.
- Advanced proficiency in Excel, payroll reconciliations, and reporting,
- Amenable to work 8am-5pm India Time

Preferred

- Experience with Workday HCM / Workday Payroll or similar enterprise HR systems.
- Exposure to statutory audits, regulatory interactions, and SOX-controlled environments.
- Experience working within a regional or global payroll operating model.
- Knowledge of labour codes, payroll automation, analytics, and digital transformation initiatives
- Knowledge to use RPA tools like Microsoft Power Automate, Advanced Excel, Basic Python, Power BI etc.

Key Competencies:

- Subject-matter expertise in India payroll and statutory compliance
- Strong attention to detail with governance and control orientation
- Analytical and structured problem-solving capability
- Effective stakeholder and vendor collaboration
- Ability to independently manage complex payroll scenarios
- High standards of data confidentiality, compliance, and integrity
- Continuous improvement and transformation mindset

📌 Sr. Payroll Specialist (India Coverage) (Haryana)
🏢 S&P Global Market Intelligence
📍 Haryana