Payroll Tax Implementation Lead

Overview

This role involves leading the successful onboarding of customers for payroll tax implementations, managing the process from initial discovery through to go-live. The Payroll Tax Implementation Lead applies deep payroll tax expertise and strong project management and consultative skills to translate each customer's organizational structure, jurisdictional requirements, and tax data into a precisely configured payroll tax environment.

Responsibilities

Implementation Ownership

• Manage end-to-end implementation of customer and tax setup from kickoff through go-live, ensuring adherence to timelines, milestones, and open items.
• Serve as the primary tax expert contact for customers, providing clear guidance and expert knowledge of the tax landscape and applicable systems.
• Maintain organized documentation including decisions logs, data status, and open items based on customer conversations regarding tax setup strategy and needs.

Discovery, Configuration & Data

• Lead discovery sessions to understand each customer's organizational hierarchy, jurisdictional requirements, and tax data structure.
• Configure systems based on discovery findings, including hierarchy setup, tax code mapping, filer relationships, and system parameters tailored to each customer’s filing and payment needs.
• Advise customers on configuration decisions and how these choices impact their workflows.
• Assess incoming customer tax data for completeness and accuracy; perform data actions and analyses to maintain implementation timelines.
• Load and validate historical payroll tax data, reconciling against customer records to ensure accuracy before go-live, collaborating with technical leads as needed.

Cross-Functional & Training Collaboration

• Partner with Engineering, Product, Compliance, and Sales teams to resolve blockers and ensure internal support for implementations.
• Collaborate with the Training team to ensure a smooth knowledge handoff at go-live, sharing configuration context and customer-specific decisions.
• Provide feedback on product gaps, recurring friction points, and configuration edge cases to Product and Training teams to improve methodologies and materials.
• Participate in select sales cycle conversations to provide expert insights, build credibility, and help prospects understand solution functionality.

Requirements

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in payroll, payroll tax, or tax operations with multi-jurisdictional expertise.
• Deep, current knowledge of payroll tax regulations, agency requirements, and filing and payment processes across multiple jurisdictions.
• Hands-on experience configuring or implementing payroll tax software, including system setup, data loading, tax code mapping, and filing hierarchy configuration.
• Strong analytical skills to assess complex tax datasets for accuracy, gaps, and proper structure.
• Excellent communication skills, able to translate technical and tax concepts for both technical teams and non-technical stakeholders.
• Self-starter comfortable building processes in ambiguous environments.
• Proven ability to collaborate across functions such as Engineering, Product, and Compliance to drive customer outcomes.
• Consultative approach, able to act as a trusted advisor guiding customers through complex configuration and data decisions.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with HCM platforms such as UKG, SAP SuccessFactors, Workday, Dayforce, PeopleSoft, or ADP in implementation contexts.
• Background with HCM resellers, payroll service bureaus, or multi-client payroll environments.
• Familiarity with implementation methodologies or project management frameworks (e.g., PMP, Agile).
• Experience with end-to-end payroll tax filing, reconciliation, and treasury platforms.
• Bachelor's degree in Business, Accounting, Finance, or a related field.

Compensation & Benefits

Information about compensation and benefits is not provided in this description.

Location

Location details are not specified in this description.