Senior Payroll Specialist

Job description

Frontline work keeps the world running. Restaurants, hospitals, schools, nurseries, airlines, stores, emergency services. Together they employ 80% of the global workforce, over 3 billion people, and they're among the hardest businesses anywhere to run. By-the-minute scheduling, HR and payroll make them far more operationally complex than the average office, yet just 1% of venture funding has ever gone to software built for them. Rising costs, wage increases, labour shortages and tighter regulation have made fixing that urgent. Sona is the AI-native workforce management platform for frontline organisations, with agents that match staffing to real demand and take the admin load off managers. That's a $500bn+ market the software industry has mostly walked past. We've raised over $100M from N47, Felicis, Gradient and Northzone, signed more than 100 enterprise customers across the UK and US, and opened offices in London, New York, Austin and Lisbon. More on working at Sona here https://www.sona.ai/careers. About the Role We're growing our payroll bureau fast, and hiring Senior Payroll Specialists to own payroll processing and the customer relationship end-to-end for a portfolio of Sona's frontline customers. This isn't a conventional bureau role. We're a fast-moving startup where everyone has a hand in building our processes, tools, and ways of working, and we're already more AI-forward in how we run payroll than any other bureau we know. You'll help push that further, not just keep up with it. If you want a highly structured environment with the playbook already written, this likely isn't the fit. If you're energised by building, and by figuring out where AI genuinely helps rather than just following a process, you'll have real ownership and real opportunity as the bureau scales. Responsibilities - Run end-to-end payrolls for a growing portfolio of enterprise customers with complex requirements, spanning hourly rates, overtime, and weekly, fortnightly or monthly cycles - Own your client relationships as their primary point of contact, giving them confidence in our service - Identify opportunities to improve how we work, including where AI can help, and help put those improvements into practice - Act as a payroll expert in support of sales, helping prospective customers understand how our bureau operates - Collaborate across Sona, from Implementation and Product to Customer Success and Support - Develop a strong working knowledge of our HR and WFM platform and how it connects to payroll - Monitor KPIs, SLAs and compliance to ensure we deliver the highest standard of service - Stay current on the legislation, tools and trends that shape how we run payroll Requirements - Hands-on bureau payroll experience, processing for multiple clients rather than running a single in-house payroll - Strong working knowledge of UK payroll legislation: PAYE, RTI, pension auto-enrolment, and statutory payments - Comfortable managing multiple concurrent payrolls at volume and across different pay cycles - Assured and expert with clients, operating as a trusted advisor on payroll matters - Genuinely curious and self-sufficient: you research, question inefficiencies, and bring ideas rather than needing a playbook handed to you - Genuinely motivated by a startup environment where you help build the processes, not just follow them - Bonus: CIPP qualified (or working towards it), high-volume or multi-sector bureau experience, and any experience building or improving payroll tools and processes, including with AI. A little Ireland payroll exposure is a nice-to-have, not a requirement. Benefits - Salary: £45,000 - £55,000 - Hybrid working - 2+ days/week in our London office (Soho) - Share options - 35 days annual leave (25 days standard plus 10 flexible public holiday days) - Extra day of leave for every year of service - Pension contributions matched up to 5% - Comprehensive health insurance - Enhanced parental leave & pay - Salary sacrifice childcare scheme (Workplace Nursery) - Annual all expenses paid team retreats - The latest Macbook and equipment budget for your home office - Professional development budget - Unlimited free books Note: this represents a typical benefits package for a UK-based, full-time employee. Exact details may vary based on location and employment type but we try to be as fair as possible to all of our team members. Please ask your contact in the Talent team to clarify the available benefits for you.