Payroll Tax SME & Knowledge Expert

Role Summary

The Payroll Tax SME & Knowledge Expert is the internal authority on payroll tax. This role is deployed where the depth of tax expertise creates the most leverage: complex configuration decisions, escalated issues, high-stakes pre-sales conversations, and product advisory.

Key Responsibilities

• Serve as the primary tax SME for Product and Engineering – ensuring features and logic are consistent with current regulations.
• Translate customer and prospect feedback into prioritized product enhancement recommendations for consideration on the tax product roadmap.
• Aid product leaders in prioritizing product initiatives and aligning engineering teams to execute key roadmap initiatives.
• Participate in UAT to validate new releases against real-world tax scenarios across applicable customers and environments.
• Provide resolution with the authority of someone who understands both the tax rules and the underlying systems deeply for complex or escalated customer issues spanning implementation, data mapping, file exports, agency interactions, and software usage.
• Feed product learnings and market information back into the customer story/marketing assets to maximize the product’s differentiation and impact on the market.

Customer Advisory

• Advise customers on complex tax configurations, best-practice usage, and escalated issues spanning data mapping, file exports, and agency interactions.
• Handle one-off advisory requests – data reviews, scenario-specific guidance – that fall outside standard support workflows.
• As an expert voice at critical points during the sales cycle where expertise can be highly leveraged; join select prospect conversations to answer deeper tax questions, build credibility, and help prospects understand how the solution addresses their specific tax challenges.
• Aid in building and testing demo environments as needed that accurately represent product and service capabilities, ensuring demos are current, technically sound, and tuned to the audience.

Knowledge & Training Contribution

• Work closely with the Training team to translate deep tax and product knowledge into training content, configuration guides, and decision frameworks that scale the team's capabilities.
• Interface with GTM, Sales, Support, Compliance, and Operations as the go-to tax knowledge resource – making complex knowledge accessible and actionable for each audience.
• Stay current on federal, state, and local payroll tax regulatory changes and proactively communicate relevant updates to Product, Compliance, and customer-facing teams.

Qualifications

• 12+ years in payroll, payroll tax, or tax operations with mastery of multi-jurisdictional payroll tax regulations, agency requirements, and filing and payment processes.
• Deep, current knowledge of federal, state, and local payroll tax regulations and how they map to software configuration decisions and customer/market challenges.
• Hands-on experience with payroll tax or HCM software at a functional depth beyond end-user familiarity.
• Demonstrated ability to translate complex tax knowledge into clear, credible communication for diverse audiences.
• Experience in customer-facing or advisory roles, with the presence to influence high-stakes product decisions.
• Direct experience with end-to-end payroll tax filing software and services, impoundment, payment, and reconciliation platforms.

PREFERRED EXPERIENCE

• With HCM platforms (UKG, SAP SuccessFactors, Workday, PeopleSoft) in payroll tax configuration contexts.
• Background working with HCM resellers, payroll service bureaus, or multi-employer environments.
• Experience in software UAT in a tax or compliance product context.
• Exposure to sales cycles, pre-sales engineering, or solution consulting.
• Professional certification: CPP (Certified Payroll Professional) or FPC.
• Bachelor's degree in Business, Accounting, Finance, or related field.