Head of Payroll
Location: Rushmere, Craigavon, Northern Ireland
Purpose
A strategic payroll leader who will hold overall responsibility and accountability for all Pilgrims Europe payroll activities in the UK and Ireland. The successful candidate will have strong leadership and team management skills, excellent communication and stakeholder management, and a proactive, hands‑on approach with a passion for improving systems and processes. They will support and develop payroll team members.
They should have extensive experience managing payroll operations in a complex organisation of at least 5,000 people with strong knowledge of payroll legislation, pensions, statutory reporting, compliance, and best practice.
The Head of Payroll will support and enable the HRS E2E project delivery in close collaboration with the HR systems team and People Services.
Key Responsibilities
* Lead and manage payroll operations ensuring timely and accurate delivery of all payrolls for Pilgrims Europe in UK and Ireland.
* Ensure delivery of a high‑quality, customer‑focused and cost‑competitive service to the wider business in accordance with agreed Service Level Agreements.
* Ensure compliance with all relevant legislation and reporting requirements.
* Maintain a full working understanding of the organisation’s payroll procedures and integrated business processes.
* Develop and maintain strong process controls.
* Implement controls to reduce the risk of delays and errors and mitigate any impact.
* Ensure a suite of standard control reports exists across the business for Payroll processes.
* Promote a continuous‑improvement culture—simplify, standardise and improve processes across all Business Units.
* Maintain high standards of housekeeping (e.g., archiving policies, domain clarity, employee master data integrity).
* Ensure deliverables from improvement initiatives or transitions are identified, executed, tracked and signed off.
* Build strong relations with key stakeholders and their teams to facilitate accurate payments.
* Lead payroll, managing performance, providing coaching, guidance and motivation, and developing colleagues.
* Assign and prioritise workloads within the team to deliver high quality results and ensure uninterrupted service in absence or holidays.
* Partner with regional HR, Finance, and external vendors to manage payroll transitions and integrations.
* Support audits and internal controls by maintaining accurate documentation and process transparency.
* Manage relevant budget costs and ensure spend remains in control, reporting progress and supplying commentary to agreed timelines.
Essential Skills & Knowledge
* 10+ years’ experience in payroll management, preferably in a multinational environment.
* Leadership skills, manager of managers.
* Excellent interpersonal and decision‑making skills.
* Strong knowledge of payroll compliance requirements.
* Thorough and meticulous with extreme attention to detail.
* Advanced experience using Microsoft Office packages.
* Ability to identify and implement process improvements.
* Excellent communication skills responding to internal and external stakeholders.
* Experience maintaining data with a high level of accuracy.
* Experience working with payroll software packages.
Desirable
* Previous experience in a SOX compliance environment.
* Experience with Time & Attendance software packages.
* Project management experience delivering new system platforms, specifically SAP.
Qualifications (Accredited)
* Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, HR, or related field; advanced degree or certifications (e.g., CPP, CIPP) preferred.
Additional Information
* Seniority Level: Executive
* Employment Type: Full‑time
* Job Function: Human Resources
* Industries: Food and Beverage Manufacturing
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