Payroll Generalist (Generalist - Senior)

🏢 WorkMotion · all WorkMotion jobs
📍 Portugal
📅 Posted 2026-08-17 · via Himalayas
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Tired of the 9-to-5 grind? Imagine a Worldwithout borders, where opportunities are endless. That's the future of work, and we're building it at WorkMotion . Our all-in-one HR platform makes it easy to hire and manage global teams, ensuring compliance and streamlining processes. So whether you're a digital nomad or a remote-first company, we've got you covered.

Ready to join the future of work? Let's build something amazing together. As we value work-life balance, please only apply if you're based within 2 hours of the Central European Timezone.

Our Payroll team is looking for a detail-oriented, highly organised, and motivated individual to join us as a Senior Payroll Specialist. In this role, you'll be the primary owner of a portfolio of entity and partner payrolls, ensuring compliant, accurate and timely delivery while providing an exceptional experience to our clients and their employees.
What you will do as a Senior Payroll Specialist...

- Independently manage end-to-end monthly payroll cycles for an assigned portfolio of entity and partner payrolls, in line with our Confluence country process guides and SLAs.

- Coordinate data collection, validation, and submission to outsourced vendors/partners, ensuring inputs are complete, accurate, and on time.

- Review vendor draft payrolls and supporting reports, performing detailed checks and reconciliations (gross-to-net, contributions, employer cost) before sign-off according to the approval matrix.

- Own customer and internal stakeholder communication for your payrolls, managing queries from employees, clients, People & Culture, Finance and other teams in a clear, empathetic and professional manner.

- Act as a subject-matter expert for your countries, maintaining a deep understanding of local payroll legislation and statutory requirements using official sources, Guru and Confluence.

- Own and maintain cost calculators and gross-to-net tools for your entities, ensuring accurate cost booking for billing and supporting Finance with payroll cost reconciliations.

Requirements
What we are looking for…

- Strong experience in end-to-end payroll operations, including working with outsourced payroll vendors or partners, with a proven track record of managing multiple payrolls or entities independently.

- Deep legislative and operational payroll knowledge in at least one country, with the ability to interpret and apply statutory rules using official guidance and internal knowledge tools (Guru/Confluence).

- Solid understanding of gross-to-net calculations, employer and employee social contributions, and total employer cost concepts, plus experience using and maintaining payroll tools such as cost calculators and reconciliation templates.

- Excellent communication skills with a strong customer service mindset, able to explain complex payroll topics in simple, empathetic terms to non‑experts.

- High attention to detail, strong analytical skills, and a structured, process-driven approach to problem solving, including adherence to approval matrices and documented procedures.

- Fluency in English (written and spoken); additional languages are a plus.

Desirable (but not required):

- Experience in a multi‑country or high‑volume payroll environment.

- Exposure to partner/PEO/EOR payroll models and working across different jurisdictions.

- Experience contributing to payroll process improvements or tool optimisation projects.

- Familiarity with knowledge bases (e.g. Guru) and documentation tools (e.g. Confluence).

Benefits
Our benefits and perks…

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Global, remote, and thriving: We're a global team of talented individuals spread across 26 countries. Our WorkFlex program lets you work from anywhere, anytime. Whether it's a beachside office or a cosy home office, the choice is yours.

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Your well-being is our priority: We know mental health matters, which is why we offer a dedicated Well-Being Day —a full day off just to recharge and relax.

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Get fit and stay

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