Payroll Operations Manager, Americas at Oyster in United States

Job description

• Application
• The Payroll Operations Manager, (Americas) is a technically credible people leader who will shape and scale payroll operations across the region. You will lead an experienced distributed team, own operational escalations and vendor outcomes, and partner across the business to improve controls, customer experience, and service delivery. The role requires deep US and Canada payroll expertise, working knowledge of key Latin American markets, strong equity-payroll knowledge, and an automation-first approach to growth.

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and develop experienced payroll ICs through clear goals, candid feedback, thoughtful delegation, and effective performance management.
• Act as the technical escalation point for complex US and Canada payroll matters and provide informed coverage across Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and emerging Americas markets.
• Own operational escalations, customer calls, root-cause analysis, risk identification, and durable corrective actions.
• Manage vendor outcomes, SLAs, controls, scorecards, and accountability; challenge recommendations when needed.
• Build scalable processes, documentation, coverage plans, metrics, and operating rhythms.
• Partner across Product, Finance, Accounting, Legal and Lifecycle Operations to solve end-to-end problems.
• Drive automation, standardization, simplification, delegation, and elimination of low-value manual work.
• Support Americas expansion while sustaining payroll accuracy, timeliness, compliance, and customer trust.

Requirements

• Deep US and Canada payroll expertise, including multi-state and provincial compliance.
• Practical exposure to Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia payroll operations.
• Strong equity-payroll knowledge.
• Expertise in payroll controls, reconciliation, risk, escalation management, root-cause analysis, and SLA/KPI ownership.
• Proven vendor-management and vendor-accountability experience.
• Experience leading senior, experienced payroll ICs without micromanaging.
• Evidence of process improvement with concrete, measurable outcomes.
• Remote or distributed people-leadership experience.
• Ability to move fluently between technical detail and regional strategy in an ambiguous, scaling environment.
• Deep Latin America payroll experience.
• Puerto Rico, Guam, or other US-territory payroll knowledge.
• EOR or global employment experience.
• In-house payroll implementation or vendor-to-in-house migration experience.
• Payroll transformation and Product or Technology partnership experience.
• Advanced practical use of AI and automation in payroll operations.

Skills

Required

• Deep US and Canada payroll expertise
• Multi-state and provincial compliance
• Strong equity-payroll knowledge
• Vendor management and accountability
• People leadership
• Process improvement
• Remote/distributed leadership

Preferred

• Deep Latin America payroll experience
• EOR or global employment experience

Benefits

• With diverse locations, cultures, and needs, we created How YOU Work; a program supporting your whole human experience at Oyster:
• Work from anywhere: Oyster has no borders or HQ. As long as work is timely, your team is supported, and you're authorized to work where you live, you can work from anywhere.
• Paid time off: Enjoy 40 days off per year (including holidays and vacation), or more if required by your country.
• Mental health support: Access Plumm, our mental well-being service.
• Wellbeing allowance: Each month, receive a wellbeing allowance in your ThanksBen wallet to spend on a wide range of options.
• Flexible parental leave: All new parents are eligible for at least three months’ paid leave, with job protection for up to 12 months or as required locally.
• WFH stipend: Receive a stipend for your laptop and home office equipment to get you set up quickly.