Payroll Operations Manager - Germany

Department: Operations

Employment Type: Permanent

Location: Germany

Reporting To: Chief Operating Officer

Description

The Payroll Operations Manager is responsible for the day‑to‑day leadership and operational management of payroll delivery and payroll implementations for our German entity. This role leads and develops the local payroll teams, ensuring the consistent delivery of accurate, compliant, and high‑quality payroll services, while providing an exceptional customer experience.

You will oversee end‑to‑end payroll operations, including onboarding new payroll clients, managing live payroll cycles, and supporting process transitions and improvements. A key part of the role is coaching, mentoring and supervising payroll professionals, fostering a culture of accountability, collaboration and continuous development within the team.

The Payroll Operations Manager acts as a trusted operational partner for customers, ensuring service levels are met or exceeded and that payroll delivery is seamless, reliable and responsive to client needs. You will proactively identify opportunities to enhance service quality, improve efficiency and streamline workflows, reducing turnaround times and operational friction while maintaining full compliance with German payroll legislation.

Working closely with internal stakeholders across HR, Customer Success, Finance and Product, you will drive continuous improvement initiatives that enable the payroll teams to move beyond transactional delivery and provide value‑adding support to customer accounts. This includes optimising processes, improving documentation, leveraging technology effectively, and supporting scalable growth within the German payroll function.

This role plays a critical part in shaping payroll operations in Germany and requires a leader who combines strong people management, deep payroll expertise and a customer‑centric mindset.

On a typical day, you’ll be…

Manage the activity of the payroll teams, coordinating the department workflow and distributing work to ensure the delivery of a high quality, responsive and efficient service
Manage performance of the German team, including managing headcount allocations, individual performance and career development
Act as the escalation point for team members and customers on complex payroll queries or customer issues as they arise
Support the implementation of new customers, ensuring that they are onboarded as per the contract scope, timelines and contract requirements
Take a lead role in supporting relationships with customers, ensuring that service delivery milestones and measures are being met consistently and that any issues are mitigated or escalated quickly
Support internal stakeholders with projects, initiatives and process improvements
Support the training and development of the payroll teams, including coaching and mentoring and ensuring that workload reflects the skill set of the individuals in the team
Review existing payroll processes alongside the Team Leads regularly to look for efficiency improvements and present business cases for change and improvements
Ensure that non‑routine and/or complex additional work requests from customers are reviewed, the work fully understood and scoped, risks identified and a plan and resources are in place before commencing the work

To be truly effective you will…

Excellent Operation Management skills, with a strong track record of managing large teams in complex bureau environments
Excellent technically, with a track record in delivery of payroll and very high level of technical knowledge of German payroll legislation
Customer-focused with the ability to establish and strengthen relationships with customers and internal stakeholders
Excellent at paying attention to detail, with a systematic and logical thinking style
Adept at planning and managing numerous processes, people and projects simultaneously
Compelling in your interpersonal style; positive, authentic and likeable
Good with people, but without sentimentality; clearly a member of the management team
Courageous and clear in your communication style
Motivated to contribute to P&L success, with strong and clear commercial drive and judgement
Instinctively collaborative; a team player as well as team leader
Ambitious for the success and growth of the business as well as professional success
Very high integrity, a role model of doing the right thing
Responsive and responsible, setting a high-performance bar for yourself and others
Highly skilled as a coach and advisor

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activpayroll Ltd.