Senior Manager, Payroll
About the role
End-to-end owner of U.S. payroll operations in a high-growth environment, leading one direct report and partnering with People, Finance, and HR to scale payroll infrastructure and processes across the organization.
Responsibilities
- Own and execute all U.S. payroll runs — weekly, biweekly, and semi-monthly — with a zero-tolerance standard for errors or delays
- Manage and mentor one direct report, fostering accountability and operational excellence
- Serve as internal payroll subject-matter expert, addressing employee inquiries quickly and accurately
- Maintain rigorous payroll records and documentation to support audits and reporting
- Ensure full compliance with federal, state, and local payroll laws across jurisdictions
- Maintain deep knowledge of California labor laws and compliance requirements
- Monitor regulatory changes and implement policy/process updates proactively
- Partner with Legal and HR on complex leave, garnishments, equity-related payroll events, and non-routine matters
- Collaborate with People team to streamline onboarding, offboarding, leaves, compensation changes, and benefits deductions
- Drive standardization to reduce manual touchpoints and improve payroll inputs from People systems
- Deliver a seamless employee payroll experience with clarity and timeliness
- Work with Accounting to ensure payroll journal entries, reconciliations, and period-end close
- Support payroll-related audit requests and data integrity in the GL
- Partner with FP&A on headcount forecasting, accruals, and variance analysis tied to compensation/benefits
- Lead or co-lead the evaluation/implementation of a new global HRIS and payroll platform
- Define data flows and reporting structures for scalable payroll integrations
- Identify and implement process improvements and automation to increase efficiency and accuracy
Qualifications
- 7+ years of progressive payroll experience in high-growth startup or similar fast-paced environment
- Experience managing multi-state and multi-national payroll operations
- Experience mentoring direct reports in payroll/HR operations
- Track record of building scalable payroll infrastructure from the ground up
- Deep knowledge of California labor laws (wage/hour, final pay, pay stubs, leaves)
- Knowledge of federal and multi-state payroll compliance, tax withholding, W-2s/1099s
- Proficiency with Rippling preferred
- Familiarity with payroll accounting, journal entries, reconciliations; NetSuite a plus
- Experience leading or contributing to HRIS/payroll platform implementations
- Experience with payroll integrations across HRIS, ERP, and benefits platforms
- Strong ownership, detail-oriented with big-picture prioritization
- Excellent communication skills translating complex topics to non-payroll stakeholders
- Ability to operate in a fast-paced, evolving environment
Skills
About Athelas
Extensible, Integrated Technology that Simplifies Health Systems
At Athelas, powered by Commure, our mission is to simplify healthcare. We have bold ambitions to reimagine the healthcare experience, setting a new standard for how care is delivered and experienced across the industry. Our growing suite of AI solutions spans ambient AI clinical documentation, provider copilots, autonomous coding, revenue cycle management and more — all designed for providers & administrators to focus on what matters most: providing care. Healthcare is a $4.5 trillion industry with more than $500 billion spent annually on administrative costs, and Athelas is at the heart of transforming it. We power over 500,000 clinicians across hundreds of care sites nationwide – more than $10 billion flows through our systems and we support over 100 million patient interactions. With new product launches on the horizon, expansion into additional care segments, and a bold vision to tackle healthcare's most pressing challenges, our ambition is to move from upstart innovator to the industry standard over the next few years. Healthcare's moment for AI-powered transformation is here, and we're building the technology to power it. Come join us in shaping the future of healthcare.
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