About the Organisation
Our client is a large, complex, and highly respected organisation with a significant national footprint and a reputation for innovation, operational excellence, and continuous improvement. Employing thousands of staff across diverse workforce groups, the organisation operates within a sophisticated and highly regulated environment where payroll accuracy, compliance, governance, and employee experience are critical to business success.
About the Role
Reporting to the Head of Shared Services, this interim leadership opportunity will take ownership of a complex payroll function during a period of transformation, remediation, and operational uplift. Currently, the organisation is undertaking a range of transformation and operational improvement initiatives. At this critical period, the role will provide stability, leadership, and delivery.
Leading a payroll team, you will be responsible for ensuring the accurate and compliant delivery of payroll services while driving improvements across governance, controls, reporting, service delivery, and operational effectiveness.
This role requires a hands-on leader who can confidently move between strategic leadership and operational execution. You will oversee payroll performance, strengthen governance frameworks, support remediation activities, optimise processes, improve risk management practices, and enhance stakeholder confidence across the business.
Working closely with HR, Finance, Shared Services, and senior leadership teams, you will contribute to key transformation initiatives, ensuring payroll systems, processes, and service delivery models remain aligned with organisational objectives.
Key areas of focus include payroll governance, compliance, enterprise agreement interpretation, operational risk management, payroll remediation, process optimisation, stakeholder engagement, reporting enhancements, and team leadership.
About You
You are an experienced payroll leader who has successfully led complex payroll functions within large, regulated, and operationally sophisticated environments.
You bring strong technical payroll expertise combined with outstanding leadership capability and a practical, delivery-focused approach. Comfortable operating in periods of ambiguity and change, you quickly assess priorities, stabilise operations, and drive meaningful improvements.
Qualifications
* Extensive experience leading large and complex payroll operations
* Deep expertise across payroll compliance, governance, controls, and risk management
* Strong knowledge of enterprise agreements and complex employment frameworks
* Demonstrated experience managing payroll remediation, audit responses, and compliance improvement initiatives
* Experience with Ascender or comparable enterprise payroll systems
* Strong shared services and process improvement experience
* The ability to balance strategic thinking with hands‐on operational delivery
* Exceptional stakeholder management and influencing capability across HR, Finance, and operational leadership teams
* Proven experience leading, coaching, and developing payroll teams
* Strong problem‐solving skills, resilience, and the ability to deliver outcomes in fast‐paced environments
* Availability to commence at short notice
Tandem Partners is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.
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