Director of Payroll (80916)

INTER-CON SECURITY SYSTEMS INC•Pasadena, CA

3d•$160,000 - $180,000

About The Position

The Director of Payroll provides hands-on leadership and operational ownership of Inter-Con’s payroll function, ensuring accurate, timely, and compliant payroll processing across multiple pay groups and a large, complex workforce. This role is responsible for stabilizing and optimizing payroll execution in a highly exception-driven environment, strengthening controls, improving visibility and tracking of special requests, and partnering cross-functionally to reduce risk and increase consistency. This position is expected to be highly experienced in union payroll environments, complex pay rules (including step-up/step-down scenarios), and enterprise payroll systems. The Director will play a key leadership role in the organization’s payroll technology ecosystem and will support payroll system transition work (including Paycom-to-ADP changeover), while ensuring payroll continuity week over week. The Director will also be comfortable presenting to senior leaders and engaging with the Mexico City SSC team through ongoing partnership and periodic travel.

Requirements

Extensive hands-on payroll operations leadership in a high-complexity environment.
Strong experience with union payroll and rules-heavy pay environments
Proven experience with enterprise payroll systems; ADP familiarity strongly preferred; ability to lead within system transitions (Paycom-to-ADP context).
Advanced analytical/problem-solving skills; able to design controls, identify outliers, and drive proactive risk reduction.
Excellent communication and executive presence; able to navigate confidential matters and high-stakes escalations calmly and credibly.
Experience working with an offshore/shared service center model (Mexico/Latin America experience a plus).
Strong Excel skills and comfort working across multiple systems/data sources.
Bachelor’s degree in a business-related field preferred (or equivalent experience).
10+ years of progressive payroll experience, including leadership responsibility in complex payroll environments.

Nice To Haves

Payroll certifications are a plus, but deep, relevant work experience is strongly preferred over credentials alone.

Responsibilities

Oversees the daily workflow of payroll operations across pay groups and locations.
Provides direct leadership to payroll management (including Mexico SSC payroll management) and serves as an escalation point for payroll exceptions and compliance risk.
Supports recruiting, onboarding, training, coaching, and performance management for payroll staff in coordination with HR and leadership.
Drives accountability, quality standards, and continuous improvement across payroll processes and service levels.
Owns end-to-end payroll operations, ensuring payroll is processed accurately and on time across multiple pay groups on a continuous weekly cycle.
Establishes and maintains robust controls and reconciliation checkpoints to ensure special requests (e.g., spot bonuses, sign-on bonuses, terminations, retro adjustments, discrepancies, audit requests) are captured, tracked, and processed without miss.
Develops and maintains weekly payroll “close” runbooks, checklists, and exception dashboards to ensure completeness and reduce reliance on manual personal task tracking.
Leads root-cause analysis for payroll errors/overpayments and implements prevention measures (not just corrections).
Ensures payroll documentation, SOPs, and case processes are current, practical, and adopted by stakeholders.
Ensures compliance with CBAs, wage/hour, tax regulations, and related labor requirements, partnering with HR, Benefits, Legal, Contracts, and Operations as needed.
Brings deep union payroll expertise to interpret complex rules, guide decisioning, and reduce risk of mispayment and associated escalations.
Supports audits and high-visibility payroll requests with rigor, discretion, and executive-ready communication.
Demonstrates advanced expertise in enterprise payroll systems (ADP experience strongly preferred) and supports payroll system transition efforts while maintaining operational stability.
Partners with cross-functional teams to strengthen system integrations and upstream data quality (including Salesforce timekeeping/rule sets feeding payroll).
Uses analytical thinking to identify outliers, design detection logic, and build proactive controls (e.g., identifying unreasonable hours combinations, pay code conflicts, retro triggers, and rate discrepancies).
Establishes KPIs and reporting to measure accuracy, timeliness, exception volume, cycle performance, and stakeholder adherence to processes.
Serves as a senior operational partner to the VP of Compensation—enabling more proactive oversight by reducing day-to-day payroll firefighting.
Communicates clearly with senior leaders and can be pulled into C-suite conversations to explain payroll outcomes, risks, and corrective actions confidently and succinctly.
Builds effective relationships across Finance, HR, IT, Strat Ops, Account Management, and Operations to ensure upstream accountability and smoother payroll readiness.
Partners closely with Mexico City SSC payroll leadership and team; ensures clarity of roles, effective escalation paths, and consistent execution standards.
Travels to Mexico City periodically as needed to support alignment, training, process changes, and operational effectiveness.