Lead and scale India Payroll Operations as a hands-on people leader. This role involves developing a high-performing team, strengthening execution, and ensuring excellent customer outcomes in a dynamic and growing market. You will manage an existing team, oversee daily operations, handle escalations, ensure quality, manage vendor performance, and drive process improvements. We are seeking a leader with strong people management, operational rigor, and effective communication skills, coupled with practical India payroll expertise. A key aspect of this role involves close collaboration with clients, external vendors, and internal teams to resolve issues and enhance customer experiences.

Directly manage, coach, and develop a team of India Payroll Operations specialists, setting clear expectations for quality and customer experience. Foster growth through regular feedback, mentorship, and development plans. Oversee hiring, onboarding, training, and capacity planning for a scaling team. Build a high-performing team culture focused on accuracy, accountability, and continuous improvement.

Manage day-to-day India payroll workflows, ensuring timely and accurate execution. Handle complex escalations and customer-impacting issues with sound judgment and effective follow-through. Strengthen quality assurance, audit routines, and standard operating procedures. Support operational quality across India payroll compliance activities, including TDS, professional tax, EPF, and filing support.

Identify opportunities to enhance workflow scalability and efficiency. Manage external vendors, ensuring they meet quality and escalation standards. Utilize operational data to identify root causes and drive improvements. Define and track key operating metrics such as SLA adherence, accuracy, and customer satisfaction.

Collaborate with cross-functional teams including R&D, Product, Engineering, and Compliance to resolve issues and enhance payroll delivery. Translate operational pain points into product requirements and process recommendations. Represent India Payroll Operations in cross-functional discussions and influence senior stakeholders. Partner on product launches and process changes to improve reliability and efficiency.

Requires a minimum of 4 years in payroll operations, payroll compliance, or payroll service delivery, with specific experience in India payroll. A minimum of 3 years of experience managing, leading, or supervising teams in an operations or service delivery context is essential.

Possess working knowledge of Indian payroll compliance specifics such as TDS, professional tax, EPF, POI, quarterly filings, and Form 16, as well as vendor-supported payroll operations. Experience in hiring, onboarding, coaching, capacity planning, and performance management is crucial.

Demonstrate a strong customer orientation, with proven success in managing escalations, high case volumes, SLAs, backlog management, QA, and CSAT. A track record of improving processes, controls, SOPs, and operating outcomes is highly valued.

Exhibit strong collaboration skills with technical, product, support, compliance, vendor, and client-facing teams. Exceptional written and verbal English communication skills are necessary for effective interaction with diverse stakeholders. Strong judgment, prioritization, root-cause analysis, and problem-solving skills are fundamental.

Proficiency with Google Workspace and/or Microsoft Office is required. Experience with Salesforce, JIRA, or Confluence is considered a plus. Ability to work a schedule aligned with approximately 2:00 PM–10:00 PM IST, with flexibility for cross-time-zone partnership, is necessary.