Payroll Supervisor

Foster Farms•Livingston, CA

About The Position

The Payroll Supervisor leads accurate, timely, compliant, and team member-focused payroll delivery for more than 10,000 team members across multiple legal entities, states, pay groups, and union and non-union populations. The role supervises payroll professionals, directs end-to-end payroll processing and settlement, strengthens controls, and resolves complex payroll, tax, accounting, system, and integration issues. The supervisor works closely with Human Resources, Benefits, Workforce Management, Finance, Accounting, Legal, Operations, HRIS, banking partners, and third-party vendors to meet deadlines, respond to audits and inquiries, reduce risk, and improve service delivery. The position oversees payroll calendars, assignments, coverage plans, processing controls, payroll outputs, year-end activities, and escalated employee questions. It also leads payroll team development; maintains compliance and audit readiness; oversees payroll accounting, reporting, systems, integrations, and vendor performance; and improves workflows, documentation, and service measures. The supervisor provides operational support to Benefits and Workforce Management as needed and supports audits, enterprise initiatives, and special projects. Foster Farms describes this as a high-impact opportunity to shape the future of its ready-to-eat business and support its mission, vision, and values, contributing to safe, high-quality food and great moments for families.

Requirements

Three or more years of progressive payroll operations experience.
Experience supporting a large, complex, multi-state, multi-entity payroll environment with multiple pay groups and both union and non-union populations.
Working knowledge of federal, state, and local payroll tax and wage and hour requirements, payroll accounting, garnishments, deductions, taxable benefits, and collective bargaining provisions.
Demonstrated understanding of payroll balancing, general ledger interfaces, reconciliations, journal entries, accruals, labor allocations, and payroll-related financial reporting.
Advanced Microsoft Excel skills, including data analysis, lookups, pivot tables, data manipulation, reconciliation, and preparation of system upload files.
Strong leadership, coaching, analytical, organizational, communication, customer service, and problem-solving skills.
Ability to manage competing priorities, exercise sound judgment under tight deadlines, and communicate issues and decisions effectively to all levels of the organization.
Discretion and integrity in handling confidential, personal, and protected information.
Self-directed, detail-oriented, collaborative, and able to perform effectively in a high-volume, fast-paced, deadline-driven environment.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor's degree in business, Accounting, Finance, Human Resources, or a related field; an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience may be considered.
Certified Payroll Professional (CPP) or Fundamental Payroll Certification (FPC).
Prior experience supervising or leading payroll professionals.
Two or more years of experience using UKG Pro Pay and People Center, UKG Workforce Management, or a comparable SaaS payroll and timekeeping platform.

Responsibilities

Lead end-to-end payroll operations for more than 10,000 team members across multiple legal entities, states, pay frequencies, and union and non-union populations.
Establish and manage payroll calendars, work assignments, coverage plans, checklists, and approval requirements for regular, off-cycle, holiday, month-end, quarter-end, and year-end processing.
Review payroll inputs, calculations, audit reports, reconciliations, exception reports, and final outputs, and determine whether processing should proceed or pause when material issues arise.
Ensure payroll funding, ACH files, pay statements, checks, tax deposits, garnishment payments, and other required outputs are accurate, authorized, and transmitted on time.
Oversee year-end payroll activities, including taxable wage and benefit reviews, W-2 processing and corrections, annual reconciliations, and employee communications.
Resolve escalated payroll questions and issues, identify root causes, and implement sustainable corrective actions.
Supervise, coach, train, and develop payroll professionals; set expectations, balance workloads, monitor performance, and maintain coverage for critical processes.
Promote accountability, collaboration, customer service, confidentiality, and operational excellence across the payroll team.
Develop procedures, job aids, and training materials, and provide payroll policy, process, and system training to payroll staff and business partners as needed.
Maintain knowledge of payroll tax, wage and hour, garnishment, unclaimed wage, record-retention, collective bargaining, and company policy requirements.
Ensure payroll activities comply with applicable laws, collective bargaining agreements, company policies, banking requirements, tax regulations, generally accepted accounting principles, and internal controls.
Design, execute, and evaluate payroll audits, reconciliations, approvals, and business controls; document and escalate material exceptions, control gaps, and compliance risks.
Coordinate tax filings and deposits; support agency notices, amended filings, employee tax corrections, and regulatory inquiries.
Prepare documentation and respond to internal, external, tax, financial, and regulatory audits.
Protect confidential payroll data and enforce role-based access and segregation-of-duties expectations.
Oversee payroll balancing, general ledger interface validation, journal entries, account reconciliations, accruals, labor allocations, and payroll-related financial reporting.
Analyze payroll results, trends, variances, errors, and control outcomes; provide status reporting and actionable insights to leadership and cross-functional partners.
Respond to ad hoc data requests while maintaining appropriate data governance and confidentiality.
Define and monitor service and operational measures, including on-time payroll completion, payment accuracy, adjustment volume, inquiry resolution, reconciliation status, and recurring error trends.
Oversee payroll processing and configuration in UKG Pro and related payroll, timekeeping, workforce management, banking, tax, and financial systems.
Coordinate with HRIS and vendors to resolve integration failures, delays, or data-quality issues that could affect payroll.
Partner with system security administrators to maintain appropriate payroll security roles, access controls, and segregation of duties.
Design, document, standardize, automate, and improve workflows to increase accuracy, efficiency, scalability, and service quality while controlling cost and risk.
Maintain desktop procedures, processing schedules, control documentation, configuration records, escalation paths, and business continuity procedures for critical payroll activities.
Manage vendor performance and issue resolution for payroll-related services, including service-level expectations, incident escalation, and corrective actions.
Partner with Human Resources, Benefits, Workforce Management, Finance, Accounting, Legal, Operations, HRIS, and external providers to ensure timely and accurate payroll inputs, decisions, and outputs.
Lead or participate in cross-functional initiatives affecting payroll, including policy changes, acquisitions or reorganizations, system implementations, process redesign, and compliance remediation.
Provide status updates, risk assessments, recommendations, and escalation support to leaders and key stakeholders.
Provide operational support to Benefits and Workforce Management as needed.
Support audits, enterprise initiatives, and special projects as assigned.
Perform other duties and special projects as assigned.