About the role

We are hiring a Global Payroll Tower Lead in Chennai to lead end-to-end payroll operations across EMEA countries for a client. You will own payroll governance, compliance, vendor and client management, and payroll integrations with Workday and ServiceNow . The role suits a payroll leader with deep EMEA knowledge, strong stakeholder communication and hands-on experience with Workday Connector, PECI and PICOF . Payroll implementation experience is a plus. It is a 5-day onsite role in Chennai.

Key responsibilities

Payroll operations

- Lead monthly payroll processing across multiple countries, with accuracy, timeliness and statutory compliance (tax, social security, pensions)

Governance and compliance

- Set up controls, keep the team audit-ready and follow local regulations

- Manage GDPR and data privacy requirements

Workday integrations

- Own and improve payroll integrations, and validate data flow through Workday Connector, PECI (Payroll Effective Change Interface) and PICOF (Payroll Interface Change Output File)

ServiceNow

- Manage payroll service requests, incident triage and the knowledge base in ServiceNow

- Track SLAs and drive continuous improvement

Vendor, client and stakeholder management

- Oversee external payroll providers, including governance and performance

- Work with HR, Finance, Compliance and country leaders, with clear communications, dashboards and executive updates

Controls and reconciliation

- Own gross-to-net reconciliations, finance postings, approvals and payment files

- Run pre-payroll and post-payroll controls

Change and projects

- Lead transitions, new country go-lives,



implementations and payroll transformation projects

- Manage parallel and other testing, knowledge transfer (KT) and due diligence (DD)

Reporting and analytics

- Build metrics and reports on observations, accuracy and variances

- Drive insights and root-cause analysis using advanced Excel

Required qualifications and experience

- 10+ years in multi-country payroll, with at least 5 years focused on EMEA (the header says 8 to 15 years)

- Bachelor’s degree in Finance, HR, Business or equivalent

- Hands-on Workday payroll integrations (Connector, PECI, PICOF)

- ServiceNow for case management

- Advanced Excel (Power Query, Pivot, VLOOKUP/INDEX-MATCH)

- Strong understanding of EMEA statutory rules, tax, social contributions, GDPR and local payroll calendars

- Exceptional written and verbal communication, executive-ready reporting and vendor negotiation skills

- Experience in project management, change management and cutover

- Willing to work 5 days a week onsite in Chennai

Preferred qualifications

- Payroll certification such as CIPP or APA

- Power BI or Tableau

- Jira and Confluence

- Payroll implementation experience

- SFTP and encryption for payroll files

Job details

Role

Global Payroll Tower Lead

Location

Chennai, onsite 5 days

Experience

8 to 15 years

Salary

Competitive, based on experience

Shift

To be confirmed

Why join

- Lead global payroll across EMEA for an international client

- Hands-on work with Workday integrations and ServiceNow

- Lead current country go-lives and transformation projects

- Clear path to senior payroll and HR operations leadership

📌 Global Payroll Tower Lead Jobs Chennai | EMEA | Workday
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