EMEA Payroll Compliance Manager, Global Payroll Compliance

Description

Amazon is looking for an experienced Payroll Compliance Manager to join our EMEA Payroll Compliance team. In this role, you will be responsible for ensuring payroll compliance across multiple European countries, with a primary focus on France, Spain, Italy, and Germany. You will proactively identify and mitigate payroll compliance risks, and lead responses to regulatory inspections and audits. You will also work with Payroll Tech stakeholders to build scalable process improvements and transformation mechanisms that raise the compliance bar and protect Amazon's employees and the business.

This role offers a unique blend of regulatory depth, cross-border complexity, and technology-driven innovation — ideal for someone who thrives on solving complex compliance challenges at scale. This is a high-impact role that sits at the intersection of payroll operations, human resource, benefits and employment tax and legal. You will work across countries, and across functions to ensure that every employee is paid accurately and in full compliance with local laws.

Key job responsibilities
• Proactively monitor payroll compliance and regulatory updates at a regional level, communicate their impact on business and payroll operations and update policies accordingly.
• Lead proactive compliance assessments across EMEA payroll operations, identifying risks in Social Security contributions, tax withholding, and statutory reporting before they become regulatory findings.
• Design and implement EMEA-wide payroll compliance assessment frameworks with country-specific depth and regional consistency.
• Manage responses to labor inspections, Social Security audits, and tax authority inquiries, coordinating with Legal, Payroll Operations, and external advisors.
• Monitor legislative changes, court rulings, and regulatory guidance across assigned markets and translate them into country-specific operational guidance, process updates, system and control improvements — ensuring payroll calculation accuracy and compliance with applicable laws, policies, and collective bargaining agreements.
• Partner with payroll vendors to validate system configurations, establish compliance checkpoints, and drive remediation of identified gaps.
• Work with Product and Tech teams for automation initiatives and implement compliance control mechanisms that work across countries, legal entities, and payroll platforms
• Partner with HR, Benefits, Legal, Employment Tax, Payroll Technology, and Product teams to develop and enhance existing payroll systems to meet payroll compliance requirements.
• Produce clear, concise compliance risk assessments and present findings and recommendations to senior leadership.

A day in the life
Your primary focus will be ensuring payroll compliance across Western European countries, developing payroll risk control frameworks, payroll blueprints, and compliance rulebooks for mitigating risks, while assisting colleagues across the wider EMEA region. You will respond to stakeholders and/or employee requests on compliance questions, partner with tech colleagues to build AI solutions for risk assessments, and ensure payroll accuracy and compliance. You will join Payroll Product design PODs, where you share compliance requirements, develop self-service mechanisms using AI agents for compliance monitoring, bring new ideas, and learn new opportunities to improve payroll processes and controls.

About the team
The Global Payroll Compliance team within Amazon Finance Operations (FinOps) is a fast-paced, team-focused, dynamic environment. Our mission is to pay employees accurately and on time, every time, with highest controllership and compliance with all regulatory requirements.
You will have opportunities to expand your technical depth, explore new technologies, and contribute ideas that shape the direction of our payroll platform. If you are looking for a team where your work is visible and your development is a priority, this is the place for you.

Basic Qualifications

- Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Business Administration, Human Resources Management or related field.
- Payroll qualifications (e.g. CIPP).
- A minimum of 7 years extensive hands on experience in EMEA payroll and tax related compliance.
- Experience undertaking internal risk reviews covering payroll compliance is essential.
- Proven expertise in payroll compliance and administration, with a strong background in employment tax consulting.
- Experience in leading payroll tax audits and resolving complex tax issues.
- Proven ability to build frameworks and documentation from scratch in ambiguous or evolving environments.
- Strong knowledge of EMEA payroll engines.
- - Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Business Administration, Human Resources Management or related field.
- - A minimum of 5 years extensive hands on experience in EMEA payroll and tax related compliance.
- - Experience undertaking internal risk reviews covering payroll compliance is essential.
- - Proven expertise in payroll compliance and administration, with a strong background in tax consulting.
- - Experience in leading payroll tax audits and resolving complex tax issues.
- - Proven ability to build frameworks and documentation from scratch in ambiguous or evolving environments.
- - Strong knowledge of EMEA payroll and HR systems (e.g. Workday, ADP Global View).

Preferred Qualifications

- Master's degree in Finance/Tax (MBA or related discipline)
- Exposure to payroll system transformations and/or tax compliance audits.
- Experience working in a government (state or federal) payroll tax or regulatory environment.
- Experience with end-to-end project management, or experience completing complex tasks quickly with little to no guidance and react with appropriate urgency to situations that require a quick turnaround
- Experience building and scaling knowledge management systems (wikis, runbooks, shared repositories).
- Experience in creating process improvements with automation and analysis, or experience in identifying, leading, and executing opportunities to improve, automate, standardize or simplify finance or business tools and processes
- Experience communicating results to senior leadership, or experience in identifying incomplete or inaccurate data, identifying the root cause and creating/implementing an escalation plan

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