Payroll Team Lead

At Terracotta – Driving Business Growth in Recruitment, Outsourcing & Corporate ServicesWe are a leading outsourcing company in the UAE, delivering recruitment, manpower, visa outsourcing, EOR/PEO, business setup, PRO services, and corporate solutions across the region. We are currently hiring an experienced Payroll Team Lead to lead our outsourcing operations and drive excellence across onboarding, compliance, and client managementPosition: Payroll Team LeadLocation: Abu Dhabi (Onsite – Full TimDepartment: EOR & Staffing SolutionsKey ResponsibilitiesPayroll & Compliance ExperienceDeep understanding of payroll computation methodology, including gross-to-net calculations, accruals, provisions, retroactive adjustments, leave salary, EOSB, allowances, and deductionsStrong knowledge of UAE Labour Law, employment contracts, WPS (SIF), and payroll compliance requirementsExperience managing complex payroll structures across blue-collar and high-volume white-collar workforceCommercial & Financial AcumenAbility to interpret payroll as a financial model, including cost allocation, payroll provisions, accruals, workforce costing, and P&L improvementsStrong understanding of payroll's impact on client billing, cost-to-client mapping, recharge models, margin sensitivity, and utilization versus costProven ability to identify and mitigate payroll, billing, and revenue leakage risksAnalytical & Business CapabilityAbility to interpret client contracts, compensation structures, and commercial agreements to ensure payroll and billing accrualsMust be capable of validating and challenging payroll system outputs rather than simply processing transactionsAdvanced Excel skills, including reconciliations, variance analysis, pivot tables, lookups, and large dataset managementQualifications & Experience4–8 years of UAE payroll experience within staffing, outsourcing, EOR/PEO, manpower supply, workforce solutions, or shared services environments.Minimum 2 years of team leadership or supervisory experience leading at least 2-3 membersExperience handling both white collar & Blue collar payroll booksProven experience managing high-volume payrolls across multiple clients, entities, and workforce categories.Not limited to HRMS execution (SAP/Oracle/D365 etc. is secondary)Must be able to challenge system outputs, not just process themMust understand how payroll decisions impact finance, billing, and compliance simultaneouslyStrong ability to work with Finance, Operations, and Legal teams on payroll design and controls