Project Manager – Payroll Management

Job Title: Project Manager – Payroll Management

Location: Bridgewater, NJ; Santa Clara, CA; Bellevue, WA; Dublin, OH; Morrisville, NC; Plano, TX (Remote)

Employment Type: Contract Opportunity

Job Description:

• 8–10 years of IT Project Management experience delivering Payroll, HRIS, Benefits, Workforce Management, or HR Transformation projects.
• Proven experience leading payroll implementation, transformation, migration, or integration initiatives.
• Strong understanding of payroll processes, compliance, payroll cycles, reconciliation, testing, and go-live activities.
• Experience working with Payroll, HR, Finance, IT, Legal, Compliance teams, and external payroll vendors.
• Exposure to payroll/HCM platforms such as ADP, Workday Payroll, SAP SuccessFactors, SAP HCM, PeopleSoft, UKG/Kronos, or similar solutions.
• Strong experience in requirements gathering, backlog management, stakeholder management, project planning, risk management, and delivery execution.
• Experience managing integrations between HRIS, payroll, timekeeping, benefits, finance/GL, banking, and third-party systems.
• Excellent communication, executive reporting, and stakeholder management skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working with technical teams to define and design solutions.
• Experience managing global or multi-country payroll programs.
• Familiarity with Agile, Scrum, Waterfall, or Hybrid delivery models.
• Experience with Jira, Azure DevOps, Confluence, MS Project, or Smartsheet.
• PMP, CSM, SAFe, or equivalent certification preferred.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end payroll transformation and implementation projects.
• Drive requirements, planning, stakeholder alignment, risks, dependencies, testing, cutover, go-live, and hypercare.
• Coordinate across business, technical teams, and payroll vendors to ensure successful delivery.
• Manage payroll testing (SIT, UAT, parallel runs, reconciliation) and production readiness.
• Provide project governance, status reporting, and executive communication.