Payroll Manager

About the role

We are seeking a Payroll Manager to own payroll operations and controls for a fast-growing engineering and manufacturing environment. This role will be responsible for accurate, timely, and compliant payroll processing while building scalable processes, reconciliations, reporting, and controls to support continued company growth.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end payroll processing for exempt and non-exempt employees across a multi-state workforce.
• Manage our payroll calendar, payroll inputs, approvals, exception handling, and submission process.
• Partner with managers to ensure timecards, missed punches, corrections, and approvals are completed accurately and on time.
• Process recurring and ad hoc payroll changes, including bonuses, commissions, referral bonuses, relocation payments, retro pay, final pay, corrections, reimbursements, and other variable earnings.
• Support year-end payroll activities, including W-2 review, taxable fringe benefits, imputed income, corrections, and amendments.
• Act as first point-of-contact for employee-related inquiries regarding their pay.

Payroll Compliance & Controls

• Ensure payroll practices comply with applicable federal, state, and local payroll, tax, and wage and hour requirements, with particular focus on California compliance.
• Own multi-state payroll tax compliance processes, including new state registrations, agency setup, quarterly filings, notices, withholding, SUI, local tax, and ongoing compliance tracking.
• Partner with Accounting and Finance on payroll close activities, including payroll journal entries and accrual support across various pay and deduction codes.
• Partner with People Ops, Legal, Accounting, Finance, payroll vendors, and tax agencies to resolve payroll-related audits, employee inquiries, agency notices, registration issues, and compliance matters.

Systems, Reporting & Process Improvement

• Partner with People Ops on payroll system configuration, pay rules, workflows, integrations, reporting, and system changes in Rippling.
• Build and maintain scalable payroll reporting, dashboards, and operational metrics.
• Build and maintain scalable payroll SOPs.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of progressive payroll experience, preferably in a high-growth environment.
• Strong experience processing payroll for exempt and non-exempt employees.
• Deep working knowledge of California wage and hour requirements, including overtime, meal/rest premiums, final pay, sick time, wage statements, and regular rate of pay considerations.
• Experience with multi-state payroll tax registrations, filings, agency notices, and payroll tax compliance.
• Strong understanding of payroll accounting, reconciliations, payroll liabilities, accruals, and month-end close partnership.
• Experience auditing payroll-impacting deductions, retirement contributions, imputed income, taxable fringe benefits, or similar payroll-adjacent items.
• Strong analytical skills and comfort working with payroll data, reports, reconciliations, and exception analysis.
• High attention to detail, sound judgment, and ability to handle confidential information with discretion.
• Ability to operate independently while partnering effectively across People, Accounting, Finance, Legal, and business teams.
• Experience building payroll processes, SOPs, controls, and scalable operating rhythms.
• Experience with modern HRIS/payroll systems; Rippling experience is a plus.
• CPP or FPC certification is a plus.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in manufacturing, aerospace, defense, hardware, or another environment with both exempt and non-exempt populations.
• Experience with multi-shift, 24/7 labor shifts.
• Experience supporting payroll during rapid headcount growth.
• Familiarity with commission, bonus, relocation, referral, and other variable compensation processing.
• Experience with payroll audits, workers’ compensation audits, 401(k) audits, benefits audits, or financial statement support.
• Experience partnering with external payroll vendors, tax agencies, benefits brokers, auditors, and accounting teams.