Payroll Compliance Specialist

GDG on Campus | University of Sydney•Darlington, SC

9h•Onsite

About The Position

Play a pivotal role in safeguarding payroll integrity as the Senior Payroll Compliance Officer, ensuring the University’s payroll operations meet all legal, financial, and audit obligations. This role acts as the key link between payroll and corporate finance. Responsibilities include overseeing overpayment recovery, leave liability provisions, reconciliations, journals, statutory reporting, and payroll tax compliance, while monitoring data integrity and internal controls. The role also involves providing meaningful analysis and insights into payroll trends, cost variations, and workforce statistics to support informed decision-making across the organisation.

Requirements

Tertiary qualifications in finance or a relevant field, or an equivalent combination of training and experience.
Advanced Excel capability, including IF functions, VLOOKUP, and pivot tables, with strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
Demonstrated ability to work independently and collaboratively, exercising sound judgement and building effective relationships across all organisational levels.
Excellent customer service, communication, and interpersonal skills, with the ability to share knowledge and engage confidently with internal and external stakeholders.
Strong organisational skills, high attention to detail, and the ability to multitask, self-check work, and perform under pressure.
Proven experience in a high-volume payroll environment in a similar role.
Unrestricted work rights in Australia for the duration of this employment.

Responsibilities

Proactively monitor, analyse, and review payroll data, controls, and compliance to ensure integrity and adherence to policies, industrial instruments, and statutory requirements.
Provide expert payroll compliance advice, reporting, and audit support, recommending corrective actions and improvements across Payroll and the broader HR Service Centre.
Analyse pay-run variations, conduct post-pay triage, identify anomalies and trends, and ensure accuracy of payroll transactions.
Manage key transactional finance activities including GL journals, reconciliations, cash flow, payroll-related banking, and month-end/year-end reporting for Corporate Finance.
Deliver a range of payroll transactional tasks such as leave reconciliations, separation payment calculations, prior service confirmations, statutory reporting, and third-party remittances.
Oversee issue and overpayment registers, investigate root causes, coordinate recovery processes, and drive training, process improvements, and system testing to support ongoing compliance.