Payroll Team Leader | North Sydney | Dayforce

There's a big difference between managing a payroll team and genuinely leading one. This opportunity sits within a sizeable Australian organisation with a large, geographically dispersed workforce and a payroll environment that combines volume, complexity and variety. You'll inherit an established team, work alongside an experienced Payroll Manager and play a key role in ensuring payroll is delivered accurately, compliantly and on time.

For someone who enjoys balancing people leadership with hands-on payroll expertise, it's the type of role that offers enough complexity to stay interesting without the chaos that can often come with large payroll environments.

Based in North Sydney, you'll lead a team of Payroll Officers while overseeing a high-volume fortnightly payroll across multiple entities and employee groups.

The Role

Reporting to the Payroll Manager, you'll coordinate the day-to-day operation of the payroll function and act as the primary escalation point for complex payroll matters. Your focus will be on ensuring payroll deadlines are met, maintaining strong compliance standards and supporting the development of the payroll team.

Key responsibilities include

- Leading and coordinating the fortnightly payroll process
- Managing workload allocation and workflow across the payroll team
- Reviewing payroll calculations, reconciliations, exception reporting and payroll controls
- Overseeing new starters, terminations, leave processing, remuneration changes and employee maintenance
- Managing payroll queries and complex escalations
- Ensuring compliance with Awards, Enterprise Agreements and Australian payroll legislation
- Supporting payroll reporting, payroll tax, superannuation and STP obligations
- Driving process improvements and identifying opportunities to improve efficiency and accuracy
- Supporting payroll system enhancements and continuous improvement initiatives




- Partnering with HR, Finance and operational stakeholders across the business

This is a genuine leadership role where you'll be trusted to make decisions, support your team and help shape how payroll services are delivered.

About You

You'll likely come from a large or complex payroll environment and have experience leading, mentoring or supervising payroll professionals. We're looking for someone who combines strong technical payroll knowledge with a practical and approachable leadership style.

Ideally you'll bring

- Extensive end-to-end payroll experience
- Experience leading or supervising payroll staff
- Strong understanding of Australian payroll legislation
- Experience interpreting Awards and Enterprise Agreements
- Strong payroll reconciliation and reporting capabilities
- Advanced Excel skills
- Exposure to Dayforce is highly regarded
- A proactive approach to problem solving and process improvement
- The ability to remain calm and organised when managing competing priorities

Why This Opportunity?

Strong Payroll Team Leader opportunities are surprisingly rare. What makes this one attractive is the combination of team leadership, payroll complexity and long-term career potential.

You'll join a business that values payroll as a critical function rather than an administrative necessity, giving you the opportunity to contribute beyond processing and genuinely influence how the function operates.

Additional benefits include

- Established and supportive leadership team
- Team management responsibility
- Large-scale payroll environment
- Complex awards and compliance exposure
- Process improvement and project involvement
- Stable business with ongoing growth
- Up-to-date North Sydney offices close to public transport
- Long-term career development opportunities

If you're looking for a Payroll Team Leader position where you can utilise your technical expertise, mentor a team and have a genuine impact on payroll operations, we'd love to hear from you.

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