Global Payroll & HRIS Operations Manager
📍 London (50% office presence required)
💷 £63,000 + Excellent Benefits
🏡 Hybrid Working | 🌍 Global Organisation | 🚀 Opportunity to Drive Systems, Automation & People Operations
The Opportunity
An exciting opportunity has arisen for an experienced Global Payroll & HRIS Operations Manager to join a fast-growing, purpose-driven global philanthropic organisation making a tangible impact across health, climate, and social change initiatives worldwide.
Reporting directly to the Head of People and managing a remote HR Operations team member based in Ghana, this role will take ownership of global payroll governance, HR systems, people data, and operational excellence across a workforce spanning more than 13 countries.
This is a highly visible position offering the opportunity to shape and enhance global people operations, optimise processes, drive automation, and leverage technology to improve employee experience and organisational effectiveness.
The organisation operates within an entrepreneurial, scaling environment where innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement are actively encouraged. You'll have the opportunity to influence how technology and data support people decisions while ensuring operational excellence remains at the heart of the employee lifecycle.
This role is ideal for someone who enjoys combining technical expertise with strong stakeholder engagement and is equally comfortable working strategically and rolling up their sleeves to improve day-to-day operations.
Key Responsibilities
Payroll & Compliance
- Own and manage global payroll operations and governance across multiple countries.
- Oversee relationships with payroll providers, EOR partners, and external vendors.
- Ensure payroll accuracy, compliance, controls, and reporting across all regions.
HRIS & Systems Management
- Act as system owner for the HRIS platform (Deel).
- Manage system configuration, permissions, integrations, data integrity, and ongoing optimisation.
- Drive automation and process improvement initiatives across the employee lifecycle.
- Explore and implement AI and digital tools to improve efficiency and reduce manual administration.
Data & Analytics
- Develop and maintain people dashboards, reporting, and workforce analytics.
- Produce meaningful insights to support leadership decision-making.
- Lead data audits and maintain high standards of data quality and governance.
Stakeholder Management & Operations
- Partner closely with HR Business Partners, Finance, and senior stakeholders globally.
- Support onboarding, offboarding, probation, performance, and employee administration processes.
- Line manage and develop a remote HR Operations team member.
- Identify opportunities to improve employee experience through systems and operational enhancements.
- Support wider People Team projects and organisational growth initiatives.
About You
We're looking for an experienced HR Operations, Payroll, or HR Systems professional who thrives in a fast-paced, evolving environment and has a passion for creating efficient, scalable people processes.
Your Background May Include:
- Global Payroll Management
- Global HR Operations
- HR Systems / HRIS Management
- HR Operations & Shared Services Leadership
- People Operations
- HR Technology & Transformation
- Workforce Systems & Analytics
You Will Likely Bring:
- Strong UK payroll knowledge and experience.
- Experience managing global payroll providers and EOR arrangements.
- Exposure to multi-country payroll operations across diverse regions.
- Significant experience owning and administering an HRIS platform.
- Strong data management, reporting, and analytics capabilities.
- Experience implementing or improving HR systems and workflows.
- A strong understanding of payroll compliance, governance, and controls.
- Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills.
- Experience working across international or globally distributed teams.
- Strong problem-solving and process improvement capabilities.
Experience with Deel would be highly advantageous, although candidates with experience of other HRIS platforms will also be considered.
Essential Requirements
To be successful in this role, you will demonstrate:
- Proven experience within HR Operations, People Operations, or HR Shared Services environments, ideally supporting international and multi-country workforces.
- Strong experience managing global payroll operations, including oversight of outsourced payroll providers and Employer of Record (EOR) arrangements.
- Solid UK payroll expertise, including monthly payroll processing, year-end activities, compliance, reconciliations, and payroll governance controls.
- Experience owning and administering an HRIS platform, including system configuration, workflows, permissions management, reporting, and data integrity audits.
- Strong understanding of HR data management, GDPR, data privacy, and information governance requirements.
- Experience managing third-party vendors and service providers, including payroll, HRIS, benefits, and EOR partners.
- Demonstrable experience improving HR processes through automation, systems enhancements, and technology adoption, including exposure to AI-enabled tools and workflow automation.
- Strong analytical capability with experience producing people metrics, dashboards, reports, and actionable insights for senior stakeholders.
- Excellent stakeholder management skills with the ability to work collaboratively across HR, Finance, IT, Legal, and operational teams globally.
- Experience managing competing priorities while maintaining exceptional attention to detail and operational accuracy.
- Previous people management experience, with the ability to coach, support, and develop remote team members.
- Advanced Microsoft 365 skills, including Excel, Teams, SharePoint, and cloud-based collaboration tools, alongside a strong awareness of cyber security and data protection best practice.
Highly Desirable
- Experience using Deel or another global HRIS platform.
- Experience supporting globally distributed teams across Africa, Asia, and Europe.
- Experience establishing payroll and employment processes in new countries or jurisdictions.
- Exposure to Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) reporting, metrics, and dashboard creation.
- Experience working within a scaling, high-growth international organisation.
- Experience implementing AI tools such as Microsoft Copilot or similar technologies to improve operational efficiency.
- Previous experience within a charity, philanthropic, NGO, or mission-led environment.
The Ideal Candidate
You will be:
- Naturally curious about technology and innovation.
- Passionate about automation and continuous improvement.
- Analytical and detail-oriented.
- Comfortable working with data and systems.
- Highly organised and proactive.
- Collaborative and relationship-driven.
- Confident working across global teams and cultures.
- Equally comfortable operating strategically and hands-on.
- Someone who enjoys building scalable processes in a growing organisation.
- Motivated by purpose and making a meaningful impact.
What's on Offer?
🏥 Private Healthcare
🤝 Flexible and Trust-Based Working Environment
❤️ Opportunity to Work Within a Genuinely Mission-Led Organisation
🌍 Exposure to International Projects and Global Stakeholders
🚀 Significant Opportunity to Influence Systems, Processes, and Ways of Working
🙌 Collaborative and Supportive Culture
Additional Information
- Hybrid working with 50% office attendance required in the London office.
- Salary: £63,000
- Permanent position.
- Start date: ASAP.
- Occasional international travel may be required.
- Opportunity to join a rapidly scaling organisation at an exciting stage of growth.
This is an excellent opportunity for a payroll and HR systems professional looking to take ownership of a global people operations function while helping build smarter, more efficient ways of working within a purpose-driven organisation.
If you enjoy combining systems expertise, payroll governance, automation, data, and people operations within a global environment, we'd love to hear from you.
