Sr. Payroll Specialist (India Coverage)
S&P Global Market Intelligence · Gurugram · onsite · Posted 50d ago
Undisclosed10–14 yrsfulltimeSourced from
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About this role
About the Role:
The Role: Senior Payroll Specialist
About the Role: The Senior Payroll Specialist is responsible for end-to-end ownership of India payroll operations, ensuring accurate, timely, and fully compliant payroll delivery across assigned India entities. The role operates within S&P Global's Global Pay Services operating model and provides deep subject-matter expertise, statutory governance support, and control oversight for India payroll.
This role acts as a senior escalation point for complex payroll, statutory, and compliance matters, partners closely with People Services, Finance, Tax, Mobility, and external payroll vendors, and plays a key role in payroll governance, risk mitigation, process optimization, and transformation initiatives, without direct people management responsibilities.
Key Responsibilities
Payroll Operations India
- Own and execute end-to-end monthly India payroll processing across legal entities, including regular payroll, bonuses, off-cycle payrolls, leave encashments, arrears, recoveries, and final settlements.
- Perform detailed payroll reviews, variance analysis, exception handling, and sign-off readiness checks prior to approvals.
- Ensure payroll activities are completed within defined cut-off timelines, approval controls, and governance frameworks.
- Independently resolve complex payroll exceptions and root-cause issues with significant employee, financial, or compliance impact.
Statutory Compliance & Governance India
- Own compliance execution for all Indian payroll statutory requirements, including:
- Income Tax (TDS on salary, projections, quarterly withholding tax returns, Annual withholding tax forms etc)
- Provident Fund (EPFO UAN lifecycle, ECR filings, exits, contributions)
- ESIC, Professional Tax, Labour Welfare Fund (LWF)
- Manage annual activities such as investment declaration windows, proof verification, tax recalculations, year-end processing, and true-ups.
- Independently handle and support responses to statutory notices, audits, inspections, and regulatory queries from Income Tax, EPFO, and other authorities.
- Identify statutory and compliance risks and implement preventive and corrective controls.
Payroll Accounting, Controls & Reporting
- Partner with Finance to ensure accurate payroll GL postings, reconciliations, accruals, and month-end close support.
- Prepare, validate, and review monthly payroll reports, statutory summaries, defect logs, and control evidence in line with Global Pay Services SOPs.
- Support internal and external audits, including SOX and compliance reviews, through documentation, data validation, and timely responses.
Stakeholder & Vendor Collaboration
- Act as a key payroll escalation point for India payroll matters with People Services, HR Business Partners, Finance, Tax, and Mobility teams.
- Collaborate with external payroll vendors to resolve discrepancies, drive accuracy improvements, and ensure SLA adherence.
- Provide clear, professional communication to address employee-impacting payroll queries and issues through approved ticketing platforms.
Systems, Controls & Continuous Improvement
- Ensure accuracy, integrity, and confidentiality of payroll data in Workday and payroll vendor systems.
- Identify recurring payroll defects and implement root-cause fixes, standardization, and automation opportunities.
- Contribute to process optimization, transformation initiatives, labour code readiness, and adoption of new-age technologies (e.g., Power BI, AI-enabled validations).
- Support continuous improvement initiatives aligned with Global Payroll governance and control frameworks
Qualifications:
Required
- 7+ years of hands-on India payroll experience with deep operational and statutory expertise.
- Strong knowledge of Indian payroll laws, tax regulations, and statutory compliance requirements.
- Knowledge of changes proposed in new Labour Code and handling of F&F within 2 working days (as per new Labour Code).
- Experience handling payroll for large employee populations in a complex or GCC/shared services environment.
- Advanced proficiency in Excel, payroll reconciliations, and reporting,
- Amenable to work 8am-5pm India Time
Preferred
- Experience with Workday HCM / Workday Payroll or similar enterprise HR systems.
- Exposure to statutory audits, regulatory interactions, and SOX-controlled environments.
- Experience working within a regional or global payroll operating model.
- Knowledge of labour codes, payroll automation, analytics, and digital transformation initiatives
- Knowledge to use RPA tools like Microsoft Power Automate, Advanced Excel, Basic Python, Power BI etc.
Key Competencies:
- Subject-matter expertise in India payroll and statutory compliance
- Strong attention to detail with governance and control orientation
- Analytical and structured problem-solving capability
- Effective stakeholder and vendor collaboration
- Ability to independently manage complex payroll scenarios
- High standards of data confidentiality, compliance, and integrity
- Continuous improvement and transformation mindset
Sourced from naukri
Skills
AutomationAdvanced ExcelStatutory CompliancelawrpaPower automateVariance AnalysisrequirementsAnalyticsPayrollPythonPower BioperationsIndianStatutoryreportinganalyticalregulationsreconciliationexcel