Payroll Manager

We are looking for a Payroll Manager to lead accurate, timely payroll and workforce payment operations for a high-volume, multi-state environment in Howell, New Jersey. This role oversees end-to-end pay processing for W-2 and 1099 populations, strengthens controls around time and pay data, and ensures payment issues are resolved with urgency and precision. The ideal candidate brings strong operational leadership, sound judgment, and the ability to partner across teams to support compliance, service quality, and a dependable employee experience. Benefits: M,D,V,PTO,401K Responsibilities: • Manage the full payroll schedule for weekly employee wages and contractor payments, ensuring each cycle progresses through review, approval, funding, release, and reconciliation milestones on time. • Review payroll inputs such as hours worked, pay rates, shift premiums, overtime, deductions, tax treatment, reimbursements, and manual corrections, and prevent incomplete or unsupported entries from moving forward. • Oversee both standard and expedited payment activity, including qualification checks, duplicate payment prevention, exception handling, reprocessing, and urgent off-cycle disbursements. • Maintain payroll continuity plans by documenting critical procedures, preparing backup coverage, and ensuring support is available during weekends, holidays, and other key processing periods. • Lead daily management of timekeeping and payroll exception queues, including missing punches, disputed or incomplete timecards, approval delays, pay inquiries, rate discrepancies, and unapproved work activity. • Establish service standards, assign workload across the team, monitor aging items, conduct quality checks, and escalate unresolved issues based on operational risk and impact. • Work closely with clinicians, client facilities, Operations, Customer Support, and Human Resources to resolve payroll concerns quickly while preserving clear documentation and audit readiness. • Partner with Billing and Accounts Receivable to address exceptions tied to hours, rates, approvals, disputes, adjustments, and supporting records that affect downstream invoicing and collections. • Provide backup support for routine credit and collections tasks during approved absences, including payment follow-up, account updates, queue prioritization, and escalation of issues to authorized Finance leaders when needed. Qualifications 7 or more years of progressively responsible payroll, workforce-payment, or comparable high-volume financial-operations experience, including at least three years leading teams. Demonstrated ownership of multi-state W-2 payroll and 1099 contractor-payment operations; experience in healthcare staffing, workforce marketplaces, or another high-volume, time-sensitive environment is strongly preferred. Working knowledge of payroll taxes, wage and hour requirements, overtime, deductions, garnishments, unemployment, paid leave, year-end reporting, and payroll audit support. Experience with payroll and timekeeping platforms, instant-pay or payment processors, banking interfaces, ERP systems, implementations, and advanced Excel; Power Query, SQL, or business-intelligence experience is preferred. Bachelor’s degree in accounting, finance, business, human resources, or a related field is preferred; Certified Payroll detail oriented designation is a plus.