EMEA Payroll Manager

Opportunity to help define what’s next in cybersecurity

At Palo Alto Networks, we’re united by a shared mission—to protect our digital way of life. The company focuses on solving real-world problems with cutting-edge technology and bold thinking, with collaboration and innovation at the center of how teams work.

Most teams work from the office full time, with flexibility when needed, supporting real-time problem-solving, strong relationships, and precise execution.

Job Summary

The EMEA Payroll Manager is responsible for overseeing, executing, and optimizing payroll operations across multiple countries within the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region, ensuring employees and payroll-related taxes are paid accurately and on time.

Because this region spans diverse tax structures, labor laws, and currencies, the role is highly complex, balancing operational precision with strategic compliance.

Multi-Country Payroll Operations & Strategy

• End-to-End Execution: Overseeing the timely and accurate delivery of monthly payrolls for multiple legal entities across various countries.
• Standardization: Developing and implementing standardized payroll processes across different countries to drive efficiency, eliminate redundancies, and ensure consistency.
• Currency and Funding Management: Coordinating with Treasury and Finance to ensure correct and timely funding of payroll bank accounts in multiple local currencies.
• Complex Compensation Handling: Managing complex payroll inputs, including expatriate payrolls, shadow payrolls, stock/equity compensation, bonuses, and country-specific benefits such as 13th/14th-month salary distributions common in parts of Europe.

Compliance and Statutory Regulations

• Tax and Social Security Compliance: Ensuring strict adherence to the differing income tax, social security, and statutory reporting requirements of each specific country within EMEA.
• Labor Law Adherence: Staying abreast of changing local labor laws, collective bargaining agreements (CBAs), and works council requirements that dictate pay, overtime, and termination payouts.
• Data Privacy & Security: Ensuring all payroll processes and employee data handling fully comply with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other regional privacy laws.
• Audit Readiness: Leading internal and external payroll audits, ensuring all documentation is meticulous, and addressing statutory filings required by local government authorities.

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Stakeholder Management

• Accounting Partnership: Working closely with the accounting team to ensure payroll data maps correctly to the General Ledger (GL), providing support with month-end reconciliations, forecast and monthly/quarterly payroll expense flux movement analysis.
• HR & Benefits Alignment: Partnering with regional HR Business Partners, compensation, and benefits teams to seamlessly integrate new hires, terminations, promotions, and country-specific benefits.
• Employee Support: Acting as the escalation point for complex employee queries regarding pay and payroll taxation and withholdings.
• Vendor Management: Partnering with outsourced payroll vendors on process and systems improvements, acting as the escalation point for payroll operations-related issues, and ensuring payroll vendors comply with agreed-upon SLAs and KPIs.

System Implementation and Continuous Improvement

• Technology Upgrades: Participating in the implementation and integration of global HR Information Systems (HRIS) Workday with local payroll software wherever possible, as well as deployment of automated PTO administration in Workday for various countries.
• Automation: Continuously reviewing payroll workflows to automate manual inputs, reduce human error, and accelerate processing timelines.

Team Leadership and Development

• Team Management: Leading, mentoring, and developing a team of payroll specialists, ensuring adequate coverage and cross-training across different countries.
• Resource Allocation: Structuring the payroll team to efficiently handle regional workloads, being hands-on running payrolls if required.

Qualifications

• Relevant educational background, preferably in accounting
• 7 years of relevant working experience in EMEA payroll with an in-depth understanding of varying tax structures, statutory benefits, pensions, and social security requirements
• Excellent problem-solving skills
• Ability to be operationally hands-on by running payrolls if required
• Proven track record in leading, managing, and developing a team of payroll specialists
• Open to driving changes and challenging the status quo
• High sense of confidentiality and integrity
• Organized
• Excellent Microsoft Excel skills
• High attention to accuracy and detail
• Ability to work under pressure and remain calm
• Fast learner
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills
• Outstanding analytical skills
• Self-driven
• Pro-active
• Fluent in English, both written and verbal
• Ability to work in a dynamic, fast-moving, and demanding environment