Senior Payroll Specialist

Why work at Nebius
Nebius is leading a new era in cloud computing to serve the global AI economy. We create the tools and resources our customers need to solve real-world challenges and transform industries, without massive infrastructure costs or the need to build large in-house AI/ML teams. Our employees work at the cutting edge of AI cloud infrastructure alongside some of the most experienced and innovative leaders and engineers in the field.

Where we work
Headquartered in Amsterdam and listed on Nasdaq, Nebius has a global footprint with R&D hubs across Europe, North America, and Israel. The team of over 800 employees includes more than 400 highly skilled engineers with deep expertise across hardware and software engineering, as well as an in-house AI R&D team.

The role

The Senior Payroll Specialist enables payroll scalability. This role harmonizes, simplifies, and continuously improves payroll execution and payroll accounting across countries, vendors, and systems—so payroll remains accurate, compliant, trusted, and understandable as the company grows without a proportional increase in manual work or risk. 

Your responsibilities will include:

• Own payroll execution across multiple countries/entities/vendors and define consistent execution standards within legal constraints. 

• Lead root-cause analysis for recurring payroll, accounting, or service failures; design and implement durable fixes. 

• Drive process harmonization and simplification to reduce manual steps, handoffs, rework, and off-cycle runs. 

• Lead payroll execution during transitions (new country launches, vendor changes, system changes, restructures/M&A), ensuring continuity and control. 

• Ensure payroll accounting remains clean as scope changes: consistent journals, accruals, reversals, and reconciliation standards. 

• Define and monitor preventative controls by design; improve evidence pack quality and audit readiness. 

• Act as escalation owner for complex or sensitive pay issues; provide authoritative explanations to senior stakeholders. 

• Partner with HR Ops, Finance, Legal/Compliance, and vendors to deliver scalable operating models and service quality. 

We expect you to have: 

• 6+ years payroll experience with multi-country and/or complex payroll environments (growth, change, or hybrid models). 

• Strong payroll controllership skills: ability to design controls, enforce SoD/approvals, and ensure audit-ready evidence. 

• Proven capability improving payroll processes (standardization, automation enablement, reducing manual effort and errors). 

• Strong payroll accounting knowledge and experience working with Finance during close and audits. 

• Demonstrated ability to lead transitions (vendor/system/country) with structured planning and issue resolution. 

• Excellent stakeholder management; comfortable acting as an escalation owner and payroll authority. 

It will be an added bonus if you have: 

• Experience with global payroll operating models and vendor governance (SLAs, KPIs, remediation). 

• Experience turning statutory/operational requirements into system/workflow requirements. 

• Project management certification or comparable experience leading cross-functional initiatives. 

Competencies & Behavioral Traits 

• Systems thinking: redesigns the process so it scales, rather than adding checks and manual work.