Senior Workday Payroll Architect

As a Senior Workday Payroll Architect, you will own the design, configuration, implementation, and ongoing operation of Workday Payroll, Time Tracking, and Absence.
You’ll play a critical role in a major HRIS transformation, ensuring payroll processes are accurate, compliant, scalable, and reliable across U.S. and international populations.
Working closely with People, Payroll Operations, Finance, Accounting, Engineering, and implementation partners, you’ll translate complex requirements into robust Workday solutions.
Your scope will span payroll calculations, taxation, time and absence rules, integrations, accounting, controls, data validation, and release management.
You’ll serve as a hands-on subject matter expert and a key point of escalation when payroll results or integrations require investigation.
The role combines deep Workday configuration expertise with operational rigor, cross-functional collaboration, and ownership in a fast-growing environment.
This is a hybrid position requiring presence in either the San Francisco or San Jose office four days per week, with Tuesday currently designated as the work-from-home day.

• Experience: 10+ years of experience in HRIS or payroll systems, including at least 6+ years of hands-on Workday Payroll, Time Tracking, and Absence configuration experience.
• Implementation leadership: Proven experience taking at least one Workday Payroll implementation live as the functional lead, ideally with Time Tracking and Absence included in the same implementation.
• Workday expertise: Strong command of payroll business processes, the Workday calculation engine, calculated fields, pay component logic, custom reporting, tax configuration, retro processing, and payroll accounting. Workday Payroll, Time Tracking, or Absence certification, or equivalent partner experience, is strongly preferred.
• Global payroll: Experience running or integrating international payroll through Workday, including Global Payroll Connect partners or custom integrations, with an understanding of multi-country data, timing, and reconciliation requirements.
• U.S. payroll knowledge: Strong knowledge of multi-state taxation, FLSA, wage and hour requirements, particularly California rules, garnishments, imputed income, equity and RSU withholding, and year-end payroll processes.
• Compliance and controls: Experience working in a SOX or audit-facing environment, with a strong understanding of segregation of duties, approvals, controls, and audit evidence.
• Operational rigor: Thorough approach to testing and documentation, with a commitment to validating payroll changes through parallel runs or reconciliations before production deployment.
• Cross-functional communication: Ability to translate complex payroll concepts for People, Payroll, Accounting, and Engineering stakeholders, adapting communication to both technical and business audiences.
• Adaptability: Comfortable working in an environment characterized by rapid growth, evolving requirements, increasing headcount, and expansion into new countries.
• Problem solving: Strong ownership and persistence when investigating unexpected payroll results, integrations, or calculation issues.
• Additional experience: Familiarity with Workday HCM, Benefits, and Compensation; migrations from platforms such as Rippling; Workday Pro certifications; international payroll providers such as ADP Celergo, CloudPay, Papaya Global, or Deel; NetSuite, Okta, Lumos, Workato, or BigQuery; IPO readiness; and AI tools for testing, documentation, or reconciliation are valued.