Senior Workday Payroll Architect

Lambda•San Francisco, CA

8d•$278,000 - $325,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Lambda, The Superintelligence Cloud, is a leader in AI cloud infrastructure serving tens of thousands of customers. Our customers range from AI researchers to enterprises and hyperscalers. Lambda's mission is to make compute as ubiquitous as electricity and give everyone the power of superintelligence. One person, one GPU. If you'd like to build the world's best AI cloud, join us. Note: This position requires presence in our San Francisco or San Jose office location 4 days per week; Lambda's designated work from home day is currently Tuesday. Business Technology at Lambda builds and scales the internal systems that power our business. We partner across the company with Finance, GTM, Engineering, and People to implement tools, automate workflows, and ensure data flows securely and accurately. Our scope spans enterprise applications, integrations, data platform and analytics, compliance automation, and all things IT. People Technology is the pillar that owns the systems every Lambda employee touches. We are in the middle of moving Lambda from Rippling to Workday as our HRIS, and payroll, time tracking, and absence are the workstreams where getting the details right matters most: every employee feels it on payday. We are hiring a Workday Payroll, Time tracking & Absence Lead to own these modules end to end, from implementation design through go-live and into steady-state operations. You will be our resident expert on how Workday calculates, accrues, and pays, for US employees running on Workday Payroll and for our international workforce running through Workday and our global payroll providers. This is a hands-on configuration role for someone who knows Workday Payroll, Time Tracking, and Absence deeply, understands the compliance stakes across multiple jurisdictions, and is comfortable being the person People, Finance, and Payroll Operations call when a calculation looks wrong.

Requirements

10+ years in HRIS or payroll systems, with at least 6+ years hands-on configuring Workday Payroll, Time Tracking, and Absence.
Taken at least one Workday Payroll implementation live as the functional lead, ideally with Time Tracking and Absence in the same phase.
Fluent in payroll business processes, the calculation engine (calculated fields, pay component logic, custom reports), tax configuration, retro processing, and payroll accounting.
Have run or integrated international payroll through Workday, whether via Global Payroll Connect partners or custom integrations, and understand the data, timing, and reconciliation challenges that come with multiple countries and providers.
Know US payroll fundamentals cold: multi-state taxation, FLSA, wage and hour rules (especially California), garnishments, imputed income, equity compensation and RSU withholding, and year-end.
Operated in a SOX or audit-facing environment and understand why segregation of duties, approvals, and evidence matter in payroll.
Test thoroughly, document what you build, and never move a payroll change into production without a parallel run or reconciliation behind it.
Comfortable translating between Payroll, People, Accounting, and Engineering. You can explain a retro calculation to a controller and a tax setup to a recruiter.
Comfortable with ambiguity and velocity at a pre-IPO company. Requirements change, headcount grows fast, new countries open, and you re-plan without drama.
An enthusiastic, go-for-it attitude. When something looks off in a payroll result, you can't leave it alone until you find the root cause.

Nice To Haves

Experience with configurations in Workday’s HCM, Benefit and compensation
Experience migrating from Rippling or another all-in-one HR/payroll platform to Workday.
Workday Pro certifications in Payroll, Time Tracking, Absence, or Integrations.
Experience with international payroll providers (for example ADP Celergo, CloudPay, Papaya Global, Deel) and employer-of-record arrangements.
Familiarity with the rest of our stack: NetSuite, Okta, Lumos, Workato, BigQuery.
IPO readiness experience, including payroll control design and equity compensation processing.
Experience using AI tooling to accelerate testing, documentation, or reconciliation.

Responsibilities

Serve as the functional lead for Payroll, Time Tracking, and Absence in our Workday implementation: drive design sessions, own configuration decisions, build and test the tenant alongside our implementation partner, and sign off on readiness for cutover, parallel testing, and hypercare.
Configure and maintain Workday Payroll for US & Canada employees: pay groups, earnings and deductions, pay component groups, federal, state, and local tax setup, garnishments, payroll accounting, and period-end and year-end processing (W-2s, quarterly filings) with our tax filing provider.
Design and operate the flow between Workday and our international payroll providers (Workday Global Payroll Connect or PECI/PICOF-based integrations): payroll input files, results return, GL posting, and reconciliation for each country we operate in.
Configure Time Tracking for hourly and non-exempt populations, including work schedules, time entry codes, time calculations (overtime, meal and rest break compliance, shift differentials), approvals, and state-specific rules.
Build and maintain Absence plans across US and international populations: flexible PTO, sick leave accruals by jurisdiction, statutory leave, and leave-of-absence types with the right eligibility, accrual, carryover, and payout rules.
Own the payroll-adjacent integration footprint (benefits carriers, 401k, tax filing, equity compensation, GL to NetSuite) and the data validation that keeps Workday, payroll results, and the general ledger in agreement.
Partner with Payroll Operations and Accounting on every payroll cycle: retro calculations, off-cycle payments, pre- and post-payroll audits, and root-cause analysis when results don't match expectations.
Design payroll processes and Workday security so they satisfy SOX ITGC and payroll control requirements: segregation of duties, approval workflows, audit trails, and evidence capture. Support internal and external audit requests.
Stay current on Workday's semi-annual releases, assess impact on Payroll, Time tracking, and Absence, run regression testing, and adopt new functionality that removes manual work.
Write the documentation, train HR, managers, and Payroll on how these modules work, and build the reports and dashboards that let the business self-serve.