Payroll Manager San Jose, CA 74hr

Location: San Jose CA (Hybrid -- on-site Mon/Tue/Thu remote Wed/Fri transitioning to fully remote later in the engagement)

Employment: Contract approximately 8 months (through March 2027)

Compensation: Competitive hourly rate

Own end-to-end payroll operations for a 1500 employee multi-state and international workforce on a contract basis serving as the primary payroll owner on a lean high-trust team during a critical coverage engagement.

What Youll Own

- Process end-to-end multi-state payroll for 1500 employees in Workday Payroll including regular and off-cycle runs data validation and exception handling

- Process employee equity transactions and related tax withholding through Workday Payroll

- Prepare and review payroll journal entries general ledger reconciliations and accruals and support month-end and year-end close including W-2 and W-2c processing

- Ensure federal state and local multi-state payroll tax compliance remittances and filings and maintain payroll SOX controls and audit-ready documentation

- Serve as the escalation owner and partner daily with HR Finance Legal Tax Benefits and Stock Administration to resolve payroll matters

- Support Australia payroll by preparing data for a third-party provider including basic superannuation requirements

What Youll Bring

- 8 years of hands-on end-to-end payroll processing experience (4-6 years considered with exceptional Workday Payroll depth and full-cycle ownership)

- Demonstrated hands-on Workday Payroll expertise personally processing multi-state payroll at scale rather than only managing or approving it

- Strong payroll accounting foundation: journal entries GL reconciliations accruals close and SOX controls

- Deep federal and multi-state payroll tax knowledge plus W-2/W-2c processing across Workday and ADP SmartCompliance

- Ability to ramp to full end-to-end ownership within about a month and operate independently on a lean team

- Availability to commit to the full contract with no planned extended time off through March 2027

Nice to Have

- Advanced Microsoft Excel (pivot tables formulas lookups)

- Basic Australia payroll and superannuation exposure

- Experience using AI tools such as Claude or Gemini to streamline payroll workflows

If you are a hands-on payroll expert who likes owning the full cycle and being the person the team counts on this is a high-impact contract seat with real ownership from day one.