Sr. Management Analyst - Payroll

About the role

The Office of City Finance (OCF) is responsible for the financial operations of the City of Seattle, working closely with the City's Budget Office. OCF oversees the City's financial control functions and enterprise reporting responsibilities and supports the goals set by the Mayor and the City Council by providing financial information and expertise. The Office of City Finance champions race and social justice and works progressively to realize the City's vision of racial equity by participating in the Race and Social Justice - RSJ, which requires fostering a relational culture and an openness to learn and apply new ideas and skills through an equity lens. The OCF is seeking to hire a Senior Management Analyst-Payroll (Sr. MSA) in Payroll serves as the City’s lead functional expert for Workday Time Tracking, Absence, and Payroll, driving enterprise-wide configuration, governance, and operational reliability. This position is responsible for evaluating system performance, interpreting complex labor contracts affecting pay, coordinating cross department payroll operations, and ensuring timely, accurate, compliant compensation for City employees. This role provides advanced functional analysis, leads design and testing for Workday updates, manages enterprise payroll, time and attendance and absence inputs for configuration, and partners closely with HR, Payroll, ITD, and departmental stakeholders across the organization. It provides influential leadership, training, and project guidance across decentralized teams and plays a critical role in maintaining a stable, audit ready Workday Human Capital Management (HCM) environment.

Responsibilities

• Lead strategic system configuration, governance, and performance evaluations for Workday Payroll, Time Tracking, Absence, and Compensation, ensuring alignment with policy, labor standards, and compliance requirements.
• Translate complex labor contract requirements into scalable, compliant system configurations while overseeing business processes, integrations, retro processing, audit controls, and payroll-related EIB data accuracy.
• Direct requirements gathering, prototyping, analytics-driven performance reviews, and testing governance for Workday configuration updates, releases, and weekly service changes to enhance usability, reliability, and efficiency.
• Conduct root-cause analysis and apply advanced reporting and analytics to detect anomalies, identify trends, support audits, and drive system improvements across payroll and HCM functions.
• Lead cross-functional solution design, stakeholder alignment, and citywide readiness efforts through coordination with HR, Payroll, Information Technology (ITD), Workday Subject Matter Expert (SMEs), developers, reporting analysts, and privacy/security teams.
• Provide clear communication, operational continuity, and issue resolution for decentralized departmental payroll teams while maintaining documentation standards and serving as backup support for payroll staff and leadership.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in business, Information Systems, or related field, or equivalent experience.
• 3 years advanced experience supporting or configuring Workday Payroll, Time Tracking or Absence.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex analysis, testing, or configuration work in a large organization.
• Experience interpreting labor or complex contract pay impacting rules, pay policies, or compliance requirements.
• Robust analytical and problem-solving skills using reporting tools or data analysis.
• Experience coordinating cross functional work in IT, HR, payroll, or financial environments.
• (Or a combination of education and/or training and/or experience which provides an equivalent background required to perform the work of the class.)
• Workday HCM certification(s) or equivalent experience.
• Experience supporting public-sector payroll operations and process development and mapping.
• Experience with multi-union environments and complex labor contract interpretation.
• Familiarity with enterprise testing governance or release management.
• Experience developing Workday dashboards, custom reports, or Enterprise Interface Builder (EIBs).

Benefits

The City of Seattle offers a comprehensive benefits package including vacation, holidays, and sick leave as well as medical, dental, vision, life and long-term disability insurance for employees and their dependents. More information about employee benefits is available on the City's website at: https://www.seattle.gov/human-resources/benefits.

Pay

The full pay range for this step-progression position is $56.23 to $65.54 per hour. New employees begin at Step 1 of the pay progression, which is $56.23 hourly. Current City employees’ starting rate of pay will be based on Personnel Rules regarding promotions.

Schedule

This position offers the flexibility of a hybrid work schedule. Employees are expected to be in-office three days per week. Individual schedules