Payroll Specialist

We are looking for an experienced Payroll Specialist to support a high-volume healthcare organization in San Ramon, California. This Long-term Contract opportunity is ideal for a payroll specialist with strong attention to detail who can independently assess payroll issues, investigate discrepancies, and help drive timely resolution in a fast-moving environment. The role requires strong analytical judgment, deep functional payroll knowledge, and the ability to work across systems, stakeholders, and testing activities with accuracy and urgency.

Responsibilities:

• Investigate payroll defects across Workday Payroll and related enterprise applications, document findings, and help move issues through to closure.
• Support future-state tenant activities, data conversion efforts, and catch-up payroll transactions while partnering with impacted teams to resolve payroll data issues.
• Review payroll outcomes during parallel testing, reconcile variances, determine root causes, and recommend appropriate corrective actions.
• Manage defect intake by assessing severity, setting priorities, assigning next steps, and escalating critical risks or blockers when needed.
• Coordinate testing efforts by organizing plans, timelines, execution steps, and issue follow-up across multiple systems and business workstreams.
• Work with internal partners and external vendors to validate and resolve integration-related issues affecting inbound and outbound payroll data flows.
• Confirm that fixes are successful by coordinating retesting activities and validating that corrective actions fully address identified problems.
• Track testing results and defect patterns to identify recurring concerns, highlight emerging risks, and provide actionable updates to project leadership.
• Prepare reports, dashboards, and summary materials that communicate defect status, testing progress, key decisions, and outstanding follow-up items.
• Maintain complete documentation of test results, issue histories, resolutions, and lessons learned to support future testing cycles and continuous improvement.
• Proven experience managing full-cycle payroll in a high-volume environment, including organizations with more than 500 employees.
• Strong knowledge of multi-state payroll processing, gross-to-net calculations, payroll taxation, and payroll reconciliation.
• Hands-on experience with ADP Workforce Now and familiarity with Workday Payroll or similar enterprise payroll platforms.
• Demonstrated ability to investigate payroll discrepancies, perform root cause analysis, and resolve complex payroll defects independently.
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced, client-facing setting with shifting priorities, tight deadlines, and sensitive payroll data.
• Ability to coordinate effectively with cross-functional teams, business stakeholders, and external vendors to resolve payroll and testing issues.
• Strong documentation, reporting, and analytical skills with attention to detail and accuracy.
• Experience supporting payroll testing, data validation, defect tracking, and post-resolution verification activities.