Payroll Manager

Payroll Manager, UK & Europe About The Position We are seeking an experienced Payroll Manager to lead UK and European payroll operations within our Global Payroll team. The Payroll Manager owns payroll delivery and compliance across multiple jurisdictions, manages a team of payroll specialists, serves as the primary escalation point for payroll issues, and partners with HR, Finance, Legal, and external payroll providers to ensure accurate, timely, and compliant payroll operations.

What You’ll Do Payroll Delivery and Team Leadership

• Own the monthly payroll cycle for UK and European entities from start to finish, ensuring timely and accurate delivery across all jurisdictions
• Manage, review, and approve work prepared by Payroll Specialists, including new starter and leaver processing, changes, and employee record maintenance on ADP and Vistra
• Build team capability through coaching, workload distribution, and backup coverage planning to avoid single points of failure during leave, turnover, or peak periods
• Serve as the final review and approval point for payroll journals, vacation accruals, and pension contribution submissions before month end close

Controls, Compliance, and Audit

• Act as the control owner for payroll processes subject to Sarbanes Oxley compliance, maintaining segregation of duties between preparation and approval
• Lead quarterly and annual audit deliverables, serving as primary point of contact for internal and external auditors on UK and European payroll matters
• Ensure statutory, tax, and local filing compliance across jurisdictions, partnering with payroll providers and HR Business Partners to track regulatory changes and filing deadlines
• Own escalation and resolution of complex employee, HMRC, and tax authority inquiries that specialists cannot resolve independently

Stakeholder and Vendor Management

• Serve as primary payroll relationship owner for ADP and Vistra, managing service levels, escalating production issues, and holding vendors accountable to their commitments
• Partner with HR Business Partners, Finance, Legal, and Treasury on payroll adjacent matters such as terminations, severance, benefits changes, and entity restructuring
• Represent payroll on projects that span multiple functions and affect UK and European employees, including system implementations, M&A integration, and policy changes

Process Improvement and Risk Management

• Evaluate and strengthen payroll policies, processes, and controls, proactively identifying gaps and recommending improvements rather than waiting for audit findings
• Push forward standardization and automation across UK and European payroll processing
• Maintain and update SOPs for the team, ensuring process documentation reflects actual practice and supports audit readiness
• Identify and mitigate risk in payroll processing, flagging issues along with recommended solutions, not just problem statements

What You’ll Bring

• Bachelor’s degree required
• Minimum 5 to 7 years of payroll experience, including at least 2 years in a people management or team lead capacity
• Deep knowledge of UK and broader European statutory payroll requirements, multi-jurisdiction experience strongly preferred
• Hands on ADP experience required, Vistra experience strongly preferred
• Workday HRIS experience strongly preferred
• Demonstrated experience managing processes controlled under SOX and supporting external audits
• Proven ability to manage vendor relationships and hold third parties accountable to service levels
• Strong people leadership skills, including coaching, performance management, and workload planning
• Excellent stakeholder management skills, able to navigate conversations with senior leaders, HR, Legal, and Finance with discretion and confidentiality
• Advanced Excel skills, comfort working with payroll system reporting and reconciliation
• Demonstrated ownership mindset, able to drive recurring deadlines and ad hoc projects through to completion without close oversight
• Thrives in a fast paced, deadline driven, multi entity environment

Join our Finance team to accelerate your career journey. You will be immersed in a dynamic environment that recognizes and celebrates your achievements.

Mimecast offers formal and on-the-job learning opportunities, maintains a comprehensive benefits package that helps our employees and their family members to sustain a healthy lifestyle, and importantly - worki…