Payroll Bureau Manager

3 billion people across the world work in frontline jobs. Yet, despite rising costs and staff shortages, frontline organisations are still left to choose between paper, Excel, and WhatsApp, or decade-old workforce management solutions to take care of the most important part of their businesses - their people.

Enter Sona: the next generation of AI-native, frontline workforce management. We’ve built an end-to-end platform covering Scheduling, HR, Payroll, and Communications that gives the largest frontline organisations everything they need to staff more intelligently and empower their teams.

In under 4 years, we’ve already made a deep impact on the lives of over 100k frontline workers and the operation of their organisations, grown the team to 110+, and secured over $50M in funding from notable VC’s, including Felicis, Northzone, Gradient Ventures (Google), SpeedInvest, Antler, and Notion Capital, plus notable angels like Tom Blomfield (Monzo).

It’s a hugely exciting time to be joining the team as we’re still small enough that you’ll have a significant impact on the company’s growth trajectory and culture, yet large enough to have a great structure, experienced leaders and world-class benefits in place. More on working at Sona here.

About the Role

This is an amazing opportunity for an experienced Payroll Bureau Manager to join the expanding payroll team at Sona.  It’s a very exciting time in Sona’s journey; we are going through a period of rapid growth and we want you to be a part of it.

Reporting to the Director of Payroll, you will build and mature Sona’s bureau offering to our customers. You will work with colleagues from across the business, including the Implementation team, Solution Architects, Product Engineers, Customer Success and Support as well as the Payroll Implementation team.

Your role will be to support the day-to-day operations of the payroll bureau, assisting to build out and refine operational processes, with the guidance and direction of the Director of Payroll, to ensure a best-in-class outsourced payroll service offering. This role involves being in a critical team, one which features heavily in the growth potential for Sona. On occasion you will assist the sales team by being the subject matter expert in the room in the latter stages of the sales process or within communication channels. You will suggest and execute process improvements to constantly drive efficiencies within the organisation whilst ensuring we never let the standard or quality of work slip. 

Responsibilities 

• Support the end-to-end payroll bureau service for a portfolio of customers, including processing enterprise client payrolls Be involved in direct customer communication, owning the customer relationship with your clients and acting as a strong, trustworthy and capable point of contact 

• Identify opportunities for process improvement and take ownership to see the improvement come to fruition

• Meeting with prospective clients alongside the sales team, explaining the service offering for our outsourced payroll services (payroll bureau)

• Adapt to a rapidly developing HR and WFM platform that feeds payroll

• Help to define and ensure we hit key milestones, ensuring KPIs and SLAs are met and exceeded.

• Stay up to date with changing legislation, industry trends and emerging technologies to ensure we’re at the forefront of payroll services.

Requirements

• Start up mentality, drive to help build a solid payroll service while disrupting traditional offerings and processes

• Extensive experience in payroll management within a bureau/outsourced environment, particularly being hands on with enterprise customers.

• Proven experience managing successful Payroll system implementation projects and payroll processing for all size of payrolls, preferably alongside an HR/WFM platform integration.

• Strong communicator able to build relationships at all levels.

• Organised and detail-oriented, with excellent problem-solving skills.

• Proactive and solutions-driven, tackling challenges head-on with a positive attitude.

• Commercially aware and eager to drive improvements, not just follow the status quo.

• Ownership mindset—if it can be done today, don’t wait for tomorrow.

Benefits

• Salary £45,000 - £50,000

• Remote-first, UK based role. Occasional travel to customers or the London office.

• Share options

• 35 days annual leave (25 days standard plus 10 flexible public holiday days) 

• Extra day of leave for every year of service

• Pension contributions matched up to 5%

• Comprehensive health insurance

• Enhanced parental leave & pay

• Co-working space stipend for those based outside London

• Bi-annual all expenses paid team retreats

• The latest Macbook and equipment budget for your home office

• Professional development budget

• Unlimited free books

Note: this represents a typical benefits package for a UK-based, full-time employee. Exact details may vary based on location and employment type but we try to be as fair as possible to all of our team members. Please ask your contact in the Talent team to clarify the available benefits for you.