Director, Payroll Operations

The University of Texas at Austin • Austin, TX

5d • Onsite

About The Position

The University of Texas at Austin is transforming to build a world-class academic health system, anchored by Dell Medical School and UT Medicine. This involves building the operational infrastructure, systems, and capabilities to support a growing academic medical center. A key part of this transformation is the implementation of Workday HCM and UKG, and the creation of Dell Medical School’s first dedicated payroll function. The future-state payroll model must support a complex workforce, including faculty, clinical staff, residents, hourly employees, and various pay rules, while delivering accurate, compliant, timely, and auditable payroll at scale. Dell Medical School is seeking a Director of Payroll Operations to be the senior payroll subject matter leader through implementation and into ongoing operations. Reporting to the Chief Human Resources Officer, this leader will be a key member of the Workday and UKG implementation team, translating payroll requirements into future-state processes, system design, testing, reconciliation, cutover readiness, and post-go-live stabilization. After implementation, the Director will lead the organization’s first dedicated payroll department, establishing the operating model, controls, governance, service expectations, team structure, and cross-functional processes. The successful leader will combine deep payroll expertise with hands-on UKG implementation experience, strong controls discipline, and the judgment to use automation and AI effectively.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Human Resources, or a related field.
• At least 7 years of experience leading a payroll function.
• Minimum of 1 year of experience with UKG Pro and/or UKG Workforce Management.
• Demonstrated experience leading complex payroll operations and working across HR, Finance, IT, and related functions.
• Experience developing payroll controls, reconciliations, testing, exception management, and operational reporting.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities in a deadline-driven environment and proactively escalate integration, configuration, and payroll risks.
• Ability to satisfy applicable security requirements for positions with access to critical infrastructure, as required by Texas law and institutional policy.
• Deep hands-on experience with UKG Pro and/or UKG Workforce Management, including time, attendance, scheduling, and payroll-related processes.
• Demonstrated ownership of at least one full-cycle UKG implementation with accountability for workstream delivery, testing, readiness, and outcomes.
• Experience designing integrations between UKG and Workday or another HCM platform, including data mapping, APIs/connectors, interface specifications, testing, and reconciliation.
• Strong knowledge of complex payroll structures such as faculty pay, clinical and shift differentials, multi-rate employees, residents, multiple appointments, retroactivity, off-cycle payrolls, and garnishments.
• Strong grounding in payroll controls, segregation of duties, audit procedures, reconciliation, exception management, and operational reporting.
• The ability to build modern payroll workflows and service models rather than defaulting to legacy or distributed processes.
• Experience defining payroll KPIs and dashboards and using data to monitor accuracy, exceptions, service levels, and operational performance.
• Working knowledge of AI and agentic capabilities in payroll and workforce management, with the judgment to establish appropriate human approval gates, traceability, and governance.
• Strong analytical, organizational, communication, and cross-functional leadership skills in deadline-driven environments.

Nice To Haves

• 10 or more years of experience leading a payroll function, with increasing responsibility for complex payroll operations and transformation.
• End-to-end UKG implementation ownership with responsibility for integration design, testing, cutover, and stabilization.
• Experience in a university, health system, or academic medical center payroll environment.
• Experience deploying, configuring, or governing AI or agentic capabilities within a payroll or workforce management platform, including human approval gates, escalation paths, and audit logging.
• UKG certification strongly preferred; Certified Payroll Professional (CPP) certification preferred.
• Experience building or significantly transforming a payroll function, operating model, or service delivery structure.

Responsibilities

• Build Dell Medical School’s first dedicated payroll function and define its future-state operating model.
• Lead payroll design and readiness across a major Workday HCM and UKG implementation.
• Shape the integration architecture between Workday and UKG for a complex academic medical center workforce.
• Establish rigorous payroll controls, reconciliation practices, governance, and service expectations.
• Use automation and AI thoughtfully to improve testing, anomaly detection, issue triage, and employee support while preserving human accountability.
• Transition from implementation leader to ongoing head of payroll, building and leading the team that will operate the function after go-live.
• Lead the stand-up of Dell Medical School’s first dedicated payroll function, including operating procedures, role clarity, escalation paths, readiness criteria, payroll calendars, runbooks, issue-triage models, stakeholder touchpoints, and recurring governance routines.
• Define future-state payroll workflows spanning pay input, manager time approval, exception management, earnings and deduction validation, off-cycle processing, retroactivity, reconciliation, and payroll close.
• Establish payroll control points, audit procedures, segregation-of-duties expectations, formal sign-off requirements, and reconciliation standards appropriate for a high-risk payroll environment.
• Partner closely with the new payroll accounting team to ensure appropriate payroll accounting, reconciliations, filings, and ledger validation.
• Translate payroll operating requirements into UKG and Workday design inputs so system configuration, integrations, reporting, and controls support the future-state payroll model rather than simply recreating legacy processes.
• Serve as payroll’s lead partner for UKG Pro and/or UKG Workforce Management configuration, business process design, validation, and operational readiness across time, attendance, scheduling, and payroll-related functionality.
• Lead integration strategy between UKG and Workday, including payroll data flows, interface specifications, API or connector configuration, data mapping, end-to-end testing, error handling, and reconciliation across earnings, deductions, taxes, and general ledger outputs.
• Ensure the Workday-UKG design can support the complexity of an academic medical center workforce, including faculty pay, clinical and shift differentials, residents, hourly employees, multiple concurrent appointments, and on-call rules.
• Develop and execute comprehensive UKG testing strategies, including system, integration, regression, edge-case, and parallel payroll testing.
• Own parallel payroll runs, converted data validation, gross-to-net reconciliation, root-cause analysis, issue escalation, and formal business sign-off before go-live.
• Apply AI-assisted reconciliation, anomaly detection, test automation, and release-impact analysis where appropriate to accelerate issue identification while maintaining explainable calculations and documented human approval before funds move.
• Define governance for AI-enabled or agentic capabilities operating across UKG and Workday, including permissioning, logging, monitoring, approval gates, escalation paths, and end-to-end traceability.
• Partner with HR, Finance, IT, payroll accounting, implementation partners, and other stakeholders on data migration, cutover planning, readiness decisions, and resolution of payroll and timekeeping issues.
• Support end-user and manager training and establish clear manager accountability for time approval, scheduling, and other payroll-related business processes.
• Lead post-go-live hypercare, establishing payroll accuracy, exception rates, error rates, and time-to-resolution metrics as stabilization criteria and driving issues through resolution.
• Own knowledge transfer and operational handoff from implementation into steady-state operations, ensuring the payroll team has the runbooks, controls, documentation, support model, and capabilities required to operate independently.
• Build and lead the ongoing payroll organization, including a payroll manager, analysts, and service representatives, with a focus on accuracy, accountability, service, continuous improvement, and scalable operations.

Benefits

• The retirement plan for this position is Teacher Retirement System of Texas (TRS), subject to the position being at least 20 hours per week and at least 135 days in length.
• This position has the option to elect the Optional Retirement Program (ORP) instead of TRS, subject to the position being 40 hours per week and at least 135 days in length.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director