Payroll Compliance Specialist

Payroll Compliance Specialist

The Payroll Compliance Specialist is responsible for overseeing and strengthening payroll compliance, wage-hour governance, and payroll risk mitigation processes across the organization, with a very strong focus on California. This role serves as a strategic partner to Payroll, HR, HRIS, Legal, Operations, and IT to proactively identify, investigate, and resolve payroll compliance risks related to predominantly California labor laws and other applicable state and local regulations. 

This position plays a critical role in reducing wage-hour exposure, supporting litigation prevention efforts, improving payroll accuracy, and enhancing operational controls for a large non-exempt field workforce.  

Key Responsibilities 

• Monitor and oversee compliance with wage and hour laws, including meal and rest periods, premium pay, overtime, split shifts, reporting time pay, final pay requirements, pay frequency requirements, and minimum wage compliance. 

• Conduct proactive payroll and timekeeping audits to identify and resolve payroll discrepancies, compliance gaps, integration failures, late meal periods, missed breaks, untimely payments, and other wage-hour risks. 

• Develop and maintain compliance reporting and analytics related to payroll compliance, including exception reporting, premium pay analysis, minimum wage reviews, and final pay tracking. 

• Partner with HRIS, Payroll, Operations, IT, and external vendors to ensure payroll system configurations and integrations support compliance requirements and operational accuracy. 

• Support payroll governance initiatives, including process improvements, compliance controls, standard operating procedures, escalation protocols, and audit readiness activities. 

• Perform root cause analysis on payroll compliance issues and lead corrective action planning and remediation efforts. 

• Support litigation prevention efforts and assist with wage-hour compliance reviews, legal requests, and documentation analysis related to payroll and timekeeping matters. 

• Review and monitor local labor law developments and partner with leadership to implement necessary operational or policy changes. 

• Assist with internal and external audits involving payroll, wage-hour compliance, and payroll system controls. 

• Support multi-jurisdiction payroll compliance efforts for remote and field-based workforce populations, including travel time, drive time, and mobile workforce considerations. 

• Collaborate cross-functionally with Legal, Payroll, HR, HRIS, Operations, and external partners to drive continuous compliance improvement initiatives. 

• Maintain confidentiality and appropriately handle sensitive payroll, employee, and legal information. 

• Monitor and ensure compliance with all federal, state, county, city, and locale minimum wage laws. 

Qualifications 

• Bachelor’s degree in human resources, Business Administration, Accounting, Finance, or related field preferred. 

• 5+ years of payroll compliance, wage-hour compliance, payroll operations, or related experience. 

• Strong knowledge of California wage and hour laws and payroll compliance requirements. 

• Experience supporting large hourly, non-exempt employee populations. 

• Experience with payroll systems such as ADP Lyric, ADP Workforce Now, or similar HCM/payroll platforms preferred. 

• Strong analytical, auditing, and problem-solving skills. 

• Ability to manage sensitive matters with discretion and professionalism. 

• Excellent communication, organizational, and cross-functional collaboration skills. 

• Experience supporting retail, field, distributed, or mobile workforces preferred. 

• Knowledge of PAGA, wage-hour litigation risk, and payroll audit practices preferred. 

Core Competencies 

• Payroll Compliance & Governance 

• California Wage & Hour Knowledge – due to the complexity of California laws 

• Risk Mitigation & Audit Management 

• Analytical & Problem Solving Skills 

• Process Improvement 

• Cross-Functional Collaboration 

• Attention to Detail 

• Confidentiality & Professional Judgment 

Success Measures 

• Reduction in payroll compliance exceptions and wage-hour risks. 

• Improved payroll audit readiness and reporting accuracy. 

• Timely identification and resolution of payroll discrepancies. 

• Enhanced payroll governance and operational controls. 

• Reduction in wage-hour exposure and compliance-related escalations. 

Physical & Work Environment Requirements 

• Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and working on a computer. 

• Ability to travel occasionally for meetings, trainings, or customer engagements. 

• Must be able to communicate effectively in person, over the phone, and via digital platforms.