Lead Payroll Specialist

Job Title: Lead Payroll Specialist

Location: Leander, TX

Employment Type: Direct Hire with Benefits 

Industry: Aerospace & Defense

Compensation: $43.00-$52.00/hr.

Schedule: 40 hrs/Week. 

About the Opportunity:

• Payroll Specialist III is responsible for the end-to-end administration, compliance, reconciliation, governance, and strategic oversight of the company's payroll operations. 
• Reporting directly to the HR Operations Manager, this role serves as the technical lead for payroll processing across a multi-state, multi-entity environment. It ensures accurate, timely, and compliant payroll delivery.

Why You'll Love Working Here:

• Supportive, team-driven culture that values collaboration, transparency, and accountability.
• Opportunity to grow your career with a global workforce solutions leader serving multiple industries.
• People-first environment that encourages employees to bring their authentic selves to work.
• Strong focus on partnership, innovation, and delivering meaningful results for clients and candidates.

Why This Opportunity is Exciting:

This role offers the opportunity to join a company that prioritizes both people and performance-where your contributions directly impact client success while providing you with room to grow and develop professionally. 

About Acara Solutions

Acara is a premier recruiting and workforce solutions provider- we help companies compete for talent. With experience across industries worldwide, we partner with clients, listen to their needs, and design talent solutions that deliver the business outcomes they want. We draw on decades of experience to provide contingent staffing, direct placement, executive search, and workforce services worldwide.

Sound like a good fit?

TODAY

What You'll Do:

• This position owns payroll execution and internal controls, serves as the subject matter expert for payroll systems and taxation, leads year-end payroll strategy, and partners cross-functionally with HR, Finance, and external vendors to maintain regulatory compliance and financial integrity.
• Process biweekly, multi-cycle, and off-cycle payrolls across multiple states and entities.
• Review and validate payroll inputs including earnings, deductions, taxes, garnishments, and adjustments.
• Manage final pay compliance and supplemental wage processing (bonuses, commissions, severance).
• Own and maintain the payroll calendar and processing governance framework.
• Ensure compliance with federal, state, and local payroll tax regulations and wage & hour laws.
• Lead year-end payroll strategy including W-2 preparation, reconciliation, and reporting.
• Monitor regulatory changes and partner with HR/Legal to mitigate compliance risk.
• Support nondiscrimination testing data validation and regulatory reporting as needed.
• Perform payroll general ledger reconciliations and coordinate funding requirements with Finance.
• Analyze payroll variances and resolve discrepancies with documented root cause analysis.
• Design, document, and maintain payroll internal controls and audit documentation.
• Support internal and external audit requests and ensure defensible fiduciary documentation.
• Serve as subject matter expert for payroll system configuration (e.g., ADP Workforce Now, Workday).
• Lead payroll-related system enhancements, integrations, testing, and vendor coordination.
• Maintain payroll SOPs, documentation, and data governance standards.
• Identify and implement automation and process improvement initiatives.
• Partner with HR to ensure accurate employee data changes impacting payroll.
• Coordinate with the Benefits team to ensure proper deduction setup and reconciliation.
• Collaborate with Finance on accruals, reporting, and financial planning.
• This role does not administer benefits enrollment processing or leave case management. 
• However, the role ensures accurate payroll deductions, proper tax treatment of benefits and leave payments, and correct financial reporting related to payroll.

Job Requirements

What You'll Bring:

• High School Diploma or GED.
• 5+ years of progressive payroll experience in a multi-state environment.
• 5+ years of experience in payroll systems (ADP Workforce Now, Workday).

What Sets You Apart:

• The role needs good analytical capability, systems fluency, leadership maturity, and disciplined execution.
• Technical payroll expertise.
• Analytical problem-solving.
• Compliance and risk awareness.
• Systems thinking and process discipline.
• Leadership maturity and mentorship capability.
• Proactive communication and accountability.

Additional Information:

• Upon offer of employment, the individual will be subject to a background check and drug screen.

After you , you may receive a call or message from our AI Talent Scout about this role or other opportunities that match your skills and preferences. AI agent role is to help speed up your hiring process by answering questions, confirming basic information, and identifying whether there's a mutual fit.

The call or chat may be recorded so that our recruiting team can review it - they make all final hiring decisions, while AI agent simply helps move you forward faster. The best part? They are available 24/7, so you can connect whenever it's convenient for you.

By ing for this job, you agree to receive calls, AI-generated calls, text messages, or emails from Acara Solutions and its affiliates, and contracted partners. Frequency varies for text messages. Message and data rates may . Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages. You can reply STOP to cancel and HELP for help. You can access our privacy policy at Website Privacy Policy | Acara

Aleron companies (Acara Solutions, Aleron Shared Resources, Broadleaf Results, Lume Strategies, TalentRise, Viaduct) are an Equal Opportunity Employer. Race/Color/Gender/Religion/National Origin/Disability/Veteran.

Applicants for this position must be legally authorized to work in the United States. This position does not meet the employment requirements for individuals with F-1 OPT STEM work authorization status.