Senior Payroll & Compliance Specialist

Babylist

1d • $93,034 - $124,085 • Remote

About The Position

As our Senior Payroll & Compliance Specialist, you'll own the most tangible ways we look after our team: paying people correctly and staying compliant in a fast-changing regulatory environment. You'll do that for a distributed workforce of 600–1,000 employees across ~35 states, 300+ of them nonexempt/hourly. You'll report to our People Operations Manager and work most closely with People Ops, Accounting, and our payroll partner, Newfront — owning our U.S. compliance calendar end to end (45+ recurring obligations a year across about a dozen jurisdictions), with real room to redesign the steps that slow us down. If you've supported complex, multi-state payroll for a large nonexempt workforce, take pride in getting it right, and like being the steady hand behind the scenes, this role will energize you.

Requirements

• Run multi-state U.S. payroll end to end in an enterprise HRIS (Paylocity or comparable) — inputs, timecard corrections, off-cycle and termination pay, garnishments, and final review before funding.
• Owned a compliance calendar covering EEO-1, OSHA, nondiscrimination testing, and state reporting — plus background checks, I-9 review, required trainings, and policy creation and revision. Surface deadlines before they're urgent.
• Turn legal redlines into usable policy. Worked with Legal and outside counsel on handbook language and translated it into something employees will actually follow.
• Improve a process, then prove it. Test against known-good output, build in the checks that show it's still running clean, and leave a written SOP behind. Reach for AI naturally to move faster.
• Can explain a paycheck to the person who earned it, and the numbers to the people who sign off on them.
• Hold a deadline. Plan backward from the pay date and the filing date, stay responsive during processing windows, and raise a flag early when a date is at risk.
• 5–8 years in payroll and compliance, including 3+ years running multi-state U.S. payroll.

Nice To Haves

• Direct experience with California or New York employment law.
• CPP, FPC, SHRM-CP, SHRM-SCP, PHR, or SPHR certifications.

Responsibilities

• Run two payroll cycles end to end — weekly for our fulfillment center and hourly showroom teams, bi-weekly for corporate and salaried showroom — handling every change for a large hourly population: new hires, terminations, clawbacks, corrections, direct deposit updates, and ad-hoc termination pay.
• Audit every pre-process register before funding and work discrepancies with Newfront until they're resolved.
• Be the person employees reach when a paycheck doesn't make sense — questions answered or routed within one business day.
• Own the U.S. compliance calendar through annual filings — EEO-1, CA Pay Data, and OSHA 300 across corporate, both showrooms, and the fulfillment center — and translate legislative change across ~35 states into the handful of actions that actually apply, then brief the People team.
• Run screenings that hold up under review: background check review and escalation, plus quarterly health exclusion checks.
• Take point on the annual "Compliance Refresh" each February, chasing it to 100% completion across every eligible employee and contractor, and partner with Legal and outside counsel on handbook and policy review every two years.
• Design the internal controls across payroll and compliance and keep the evidence trail current — the same trail that carries our annual workers' compensation and external financial audits.
• Build automation and prove it works — skills, scheduled tasks, and workflow tooling, tested against known-good output and instrumented so you can see it's still running clean. Some SOPs exist; you'll build the rest.

Benefits

• Company-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Retirement savings plan with company matching
• Flexible spending accounts
• Generous paid parental leave
• PTO
• Winter Wonder Week: the whole company takes a paid week off at the end of the year
• Remote work stipend to set up your office
• Perks for physical, mental, and emotional health, parenting, childcare, and financial planning

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed