Payroll Systems, Governance & Compliance Leader
478 George St, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia
Posted Thursday 12 February 2026 at 1:00 pm
About EVT:
EVT has an endless range of roles and careers paths to explore across over 140 entertainment experiences like Event Cinemas and Moonlight Cinemas, 150 award winning restaurants and bars, and 80+ hotels, including QT, Rydges, Atura, LyLo, Independent Collection and Australia’s most loved year round alpine resort, Thredbo. Our ventures include a ~$2.3B property portfolio and hotel management, just to name a few. Once you’re in, there’s no limits on where your career could take you.
About the Role:
The Payroll Systems, Governance & Compliance Leader is a senior specialist role established to protect the organisation by strengthening payroll integrity, legislative compliance, and system governance across Australia and New Zealand following the implementation of Dayforce.
The role provides second-line assurance that Dayforce configuration, integrations, and payroll logic reflect legislative requirements and approved business policy, supported by clear, auditable documentation.
Operating independently from payroll processing, the role provides second-line assurance and acts as the organisation’s payroll compliance authority.
Key Accountabilities:
Payroll Compliance & & Legislative Stewardship (AU & NZ)
* Act as the internal authority on Australian (and New Zealand, where applicable) payroll legislation and industrial instruments, including Long Service Leave, Awards and Enterprise Agreements, superannuation, and termination payments.
* Review and enhance the Group’s procedures to ensure that legislative and policy requirements are accurately translated into Dayforce system rules and controls, with clear evidence that payroll outcomes are compliant and defensible.
Payroll System Governance & Configuration Oversight
* Maintain expert knowledge of Dayforce payroll architecture and provide independent oversight of high-risk configurations, including accruals, averaging, service continuity, transfers and termination calculations.
* Identify configuration risk, legacy defects, and manual workarounds, and drive permanent system fixes to strengthen payroll integrity and reduce reliance on manual controls.
Second-Line Payroll Assurance
* Operate independently from business-as-usual payroll processing to provide second-line assurance over payroll outcomes.
* Perform targeted validation and reasonability checks to provide assurance that payroll rules, controls, and outputs are accurate, repeatable, and audit-ready.
Governance, Change & Documentation Control
* Own and maintain key payroll governance artefacts, including issue, underpayment, and overpayment registers.
* Act as the payroll compliance and risk sign-off authority for payroll system changes, upgrades, and configuration updates prior to production release.
* Provide assurance that payroll documentation, controls, and evidence remain current, complete, and suitable for audit and external review.
Quality Assurance, Testing & Change Control
* Design and execute robust payroll test scenarios reflecting real-world legislative complexity and edge cases across Australia and New Zealand.
* Act as the payroll compliance and risk sign-off authority for system changes, upgrades, and configuration changes prior to production deployment.
* Review vendor-delivered changes to confirm legislative alignment, manage regression risk, and protect the integrity of payroll and downstream reporting outcomes.
* Act as an evidence-based counterweight to payroll vendors, challenging compliance claims and requiring proof of legislative alignment and test outcomes.
* Partner with People & Culture, Finance, IT, Risk, and Audit to provide assurance that payroll governance is aligned and transparent.
* Identify and mitigate payroll risks, including legislative change, system or integration failure, data integrity issues, and key-person dependency, and maintain a Payroll Continuity Plan to provide assurance in relation to Group procedures for the continuity of pay.
Technical Skills:
Payroll Legislation & Industrial Frameworks
* Strong applied knowledge of Australian payroll legislation, including Long Service Leave, Modern Awards and Enterprise Agreements, superannuation, and termination obligations; working knowledge of New Zealand payroll legislation.
Payroll Systems & Configuration
* Advanced experience with enterprise payroll systems (Dayforce preferred), with a strong understanding of payroll configuration and the ability to identify and remediate configuration risk.
* Demonstrated capability in payroll governance and assurance, including control design, segregation of duties, and maintenance of audit-ready documentation.
Experience
Complex Australian payroll experience
* Experience operating in complex Australian payroll environments, including Modern Awards or Enterprise Agreements and state-based Long Service Leave, with accountability for compliant payroll outcomes.
Payroll system governance and assurance
* Hands-on experience providing governance, validation, or assurance over an enterprise payroll system (Dayforce or equivalent), including testing configuration changes and identifying systemic risk.
Ownership of payroll risk events
* Direct involvement in payroll risk events such as audits, underpayment reviews, remediation programs, or major payroll issues, with responsibility for root-cause analysis and control uplift.
Qualifications:
* Tertiary qualification in a relevant discipline such as payroll, employment relations, industrial relations, law, business systems, accounting, finance, or a related field (essential).
* Professional Accreditation/Membership: Australian Payroll Association (APA), CPA, CA (highly desirable)
Benefits & Perks:
* Incredible team member discounts from your first day on-the-job.
* 50% off stays at EVT hotels – Rydges, QT, Atura, Lylo and more.
* $2 movie tickets, plus Moonlight, Gold Class, Candy Bar discounts and more.
* Awesome winter and summer savings and discounts at Thredbo.
* Rapid career growth opportunities through our EVT network.
* Local community involvement, volunteering and charitable giving.
* Australia and NZ ’ s largest and most diverse experiences company
Become an EVT experience creator, opportunity taker, the ultimate Daymaker. Join and make a positive impact on our people, communities, and environment every day.
When you click apply you will be directed through to our Job Ad listed on Dayforce which is the platform in place to track all of our applicants when applying for roles with the EVT group. You will be asked to enter in your information and answer some screening questions when applying.
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