Senior Payroll Compliance Manager - Payroll Tax Specialist, US & Canada
About the role
The Senior Payroll Compliance Manager - Payroll Tax Specialist owns the health and accuracy of QuickBooks Workforce's payroll tax portfolio. This role involves identifying compliance changes, translating them into product actions, maintaining the source-of-truth data, and ensuring reliable execution of recurring compliance obligations. The role also supports the team's needs as they evolve towards automation and tooling.
Responsibilities
Compliance Operations Design — Partner with leadership to design and build intake, tracking, and routing systems for compliance changes. Establish the operational foundation for compliance management.
Compliance Escalation Triage — Serve as the primary intake point for compliance issues, diagnose root causes, prioritize, and route to the correct team for resolution. Identify patterns and proactively propose systemic fixes.
Agency Mandate Monitoring & Response — Monitor agencies for changes in forms, filing frequencies, and specifications. Assess impacts on QuickBooks Workforce customers and internal systems, creating actionable work items.
Requirements Documentation — Write clear, technically accurate requirements for engineering teams, including file format specifications, agency contact details, go-live dates, and customer impact. Track implementation through to release and confirm go-live with the agency.
Agency Requirements Database — Own and maintain the master database of supported tax jurisdictions, including filing methods, forms, amendment instructions, account ID requirements, agency contacts, and system update history. Ensure accuracy through regular review cycles.
Agency Data Exchange — Define and maintain rules, file formats, and requirements for agency data exchange across supported jurisdictions. Evaluate and implement updates as states introduce new data feeds, expand scope, or change requirements.
Agency Relationship Management — Maintain working relationships with key tax agency contacts, particularly those with complex or frequently changing requirements. Serve as the compliance escalation point for direct engagement on filings, forms, or payment specifications.
Documentation & Audit Readiness — Develop and maintain compliance documentation and artifacts supporting audit readiness, regulatory traceability, and shared understanding across the team. Ensure no single person holds critical institutional knowledge.
Explore, experiment with, and adopt AI-powered tools to enhance compliance monitoring, research, and documentation. Apply regulatory expertise to validate and act on AI-surfaced notifications, and provide feedback to improve automated monitoring.
Identify recurring manual tasks that are candidates for automation, document them clearly, and partner with engineering to build durable solutions that reduce operational fragility.
Qualifications
Proven Expertise: 3+ years of experience in payroll tax compliance, tax operations, or a closely related field — ideally at a payroll service provider or financial technology company. Working knowledge of payroll tax filing requirements, including multiple deposit frequencies, reconciliation processes, and year-end filing requirements.
Technical Acumen: Ability to read and interpret tax agency specifications and translate them into clear requirements for engineering teams. Familiarity with payroll tax processing systems and compliance platforms is a strong plus.
Data-Driven and AI-First Mindset: Ability to gather, analyze, and utilize data to assess compliance status and drive decisions. Familiarity with AI/ML concepts and how to leverage them in a compliance setting. Hands-on experience using generative AI tools is a plus.
Exceptional Communicator: Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to translate regulatory requirements clearly for technical and non-technical audiences alike. Comfortable writing detailed requirements, process documentation, agency correspondence, and internal status updates.
Organized and Detail-Oriented: Strong attention to detail and the ability to manage multiple concurrent open items across many jurisdictions without missing deadlines. Comfortable working cross-functionally with engineering, product, and operations teams, often without direct authority over the timeline or outcome.
Education: Bachelor's degree or equivalent work experience.
Preferred
Experience with tax jurisdictions, including varying filing methods, form structures, and agency-specific requirements.
Experience designing or improving compliance workflows, intake processes, or operational documentation standards.
Familiarity with structured agency data exchange formats such as EFW2, NACHA, or agency-specific file specifications.
Experience preparing compliance documentation for internal or external audits, including regulatory traceability artifacts.
Exposure to automation tools and scripting, and an interest in reducing manual work through tooling.
Experience partnering with engineering or product teams to translate compliance requirements into system implementations.
Certified Payroll Professional (CPP) designation preferred.