Payroll Specialist

Ramirez Hospitality Group•Highlands Ranch, CO

14d•Hybrid

About The Position

We are hiring a Payroll Specialist to own the promise of accurate and timely pay for six restaurants and one corporate office. This is a specialist role focused on payroll processing, encompassing the full weekly cycle from timekeeping review through funding, reporting, and reconciliation. Beyond the core cycle, you will support the People team in areas where payroll and HR intersect. This role operates at the intersection of People, Finance, and the restaurants, requiring close collaboration with the Director of People, Director of Finance, VP of Finance, and all six General Managers.

Requirements

Minimum 2 years of hands-on payroll processing experience, owning a cycle end-to-end.
Toast Payroll and Toast POS experience required.
Restaurant industry experience.
Current working knowledge of labor law as it applies to payroll at both the federal and Colorado level.
A tendency to document processes and leave a trail.
Ability to raise issues directly and kindly to the right person early.
Discretion in handling confidential information.
Ability to keep labor law knowledge current as rules change.

Nice To Haves

Bilingual English/Spanish.
Restaurant365 (R365) experience, particularly payroll exports and the payroll to accounting handoff.
Experience building payroll journal entry mappings or supporting period close.
Multi-entity payroll experience across separate EINs.
Benefits administration or deduction auditing exposure.
Comfort in spreadsheets beyond the basics.

Responsibilities

Manage the weekly payroll cycle for six restaurant locations and the corporate office using Toast Payroll, including timekeeping review, tips, adjustments, retro pay, terminations, funding, and post-processing verification.
Ensure payroll is processed accurately and on time each week, without exceptions or surprises.
Maintain extreme attention to detail to identify and correct errors such as misclassified punches, duplicated adjustments, unrecorded rate changes, and discrepancies in numbers.
Track all additions and edits to payroll weekly, documenting what changed, who requested it, when it was entered, and why.
Produce clean weekly summary reports for Finance and Ownership that are accurate, consistent, and delivered on schedule.
Identify issues that trace back to a restaurant and escalate them to the Director of People with necessary documentation for correction at the store level.
Maintain a working knowledge of current federal and Colorado wage and hour laws as they apply to payroll, including overtime, tip credit and tip pooling, minimum wage, meal and rest periods, final pay, and recordkeeping.
Recognize when labor schedules or punch patterns do not make sense from an operational perspective.
Build and maintain written standard operating procedures (SOPs) for all owned processes.
Provide support to the People team as needed, including onboarding paperwork, benefits deduction accuracy, employment verifications, and personnel file integrity.
Treat payroll processing with a sense of importance, recognizing that the paychecks support families.