Payroll Incident & Risk Lead

About this role

Responsibilities

• Strategic Risk Management & Governance
• Design and oversee the execution of global risk management frameworks for payroll operations, new product features and market expansion.
• Own and evolve the global payroll risk register, ensuring real-time visibility of critical risks and mitigation plans.
• Lead cross-functional risk assessments with Legal, Product, Payroll Ops and other operational teams to align on emerging threats and regulatory changes.
• Drive the strategic use and evolution of the Country Maturity Matrix and other risk scoring tools.
• Oversee quarterly and ad-hoc risk assessments, ensuring accurate, scalable processes and actionable outputs.
• Provide insight into key risk trends, contributing to strategic planning and audit readiness.
• Incident Leadership & RCA Excellence
• Serve as the escalation point and lead coordinator for complex or high-impact payroll incidents globally.
• Establish scalable, high-trust processes for triaging, investigating, resolving, and learning from incidents.
• Lead and coach teams through Root Cause Analysis (RCA), ensuring consistency, quality, and accountability across the organization.
• Own and optimize the incident & RCA database, enabling proactive trend identification and strategic learning.
• Liaise with senior leadership and stakeholders on incident impact, resolution progress, and post-incident improvements.
• Culture of Continuous Improvement
• Translate incident data, operational feedback and audit findings into cross-functional improvement initiatives.
• Collaborate with Product, Engineering, and Payroll Ops to implement system/process fixes that reduce recurrence and enhance control.
• Champion the integration of risk-aware thinking into daily team operations and decision-making.
• Team Enablement & Leadership
• Mentor and develop Specialists and Managers in risk assessment, incident handling, and RCA facilitation.
• Design and deliver training sessions and simulation exercises to upskill teams in risk and incident practices.
• Foster a culture of transparency, accountability and continuous learning across the Payroll Strategy & Compliance team and wider Payroll team.
• Practicals
• You'll report to: Manager, GP Strategy & Compliance
• Team: Payroll Strategy & Compliance (PS&C)
• Location: For this position we welcome everyone to apply, but we will prioritize applications from the following locations as we encourage our teams to diversify; EMEA
• Start date: As soon as possible
• Application process
• Interview with recruiter
• Interview with future manager
• Interview with Senior Manager
• Bar Raiser Interview
• Prior employment verification check
• Remote's Total Rewards philosophy is to ensure fair, unbiased compensation and fair equity pay along with competitive benefits in all locations in which we operate. We do not agree to or encourage cheap-labor practices and therefore we ensure to pay above in-location rates. We hope to inspire other companies to support global talent-hiring and bring local wealth to developing countries.
• At first glance our salary bands seem quite wide - here is some context. At Remote we have international operations and a globally distributed workforce. We use geo ranges to consider geographic pay differentials as part of our global compensation strategy to remain competitive in various markets while we hiring globally.
• Our salary ranges are determined by role, level and location, and our job titles may span more than one career level. The actual base pay for the successful candidate in this role is dependent upon many factors such as location, transferable or job-related skills, work experience, relevant training, business needs, and market demands. The base salary range may be subject to change.
• At Remote, we foster internal mobility as a key element of our culture of employee growth and development, supported by a compensation philosophy that guarantees pay equity and fairness. Therefore, all compensation changes associated with an internal move will be reviewed by the Total Rewards & People Enablement team on a case by case basis.
• The annual salary range for this full-time position is
• $49,900—$112,300 USD

About Remotecom

Remote is solving modern organizations’ biggest challenge – navigating global employment compliantly with ease. We make it possible for businesses of all sizes to recruit, pay, and manage international teams. With our core values at heart and future focused work culture, our team works tirelessly on ambitious problems, asynchronously, around the world. You can find Remoters working from 6 different continents (Antarctica left to go!) and all of our positions are fully remote. With Innovation as one of the core values, we have built Automation and AI capabilities into the requirements for every role. We encourage every member of the Remote team to bring their talents, experiences and culture to the table to help us build the best-in-class HR platform. If you are energetic, curious, motivated and ambitious, be part of our world. Apply now and define the future of work! What this job can offer you As a GP Incident & Risk Lead, you will spearhead the strategic development and execution of global payroll risk and incident management. You’ll lead critical programs to enhance our risk posture, drive resolution of high-impact incidents and partner across teams to embed risk-aware thinking into everyday operations. You’ll mentor team members, evolve our frameworks, and directly influence how Remote grows with control and confidence. This is a high-visibility leadership role for someone who thrives on complexity, collaboration and continuous improvement. What you bring Proven extensive experience in payroll risk management, incident response, compliance, or operations management preferably in global payroll, finance, SaaS or regulated industries. Demonstrated ability to lead incident response and implement sustainable, data-driven solutions. Expertise in designing and scaling risk governance frameworks and tools. Experience mentoring or managing others in a distributed, remote-first environment. Strong project management skills with the ability to lead cross-functional initiatives end-to-end. Excellent communication and influence skills, including experience presenting to senior stakeholders. High emotional intelligence, sound judgment, and comfort operating in ambiguity and complexity. Familiarity with tools like Notion, Monday.com and RCA methodologies (e.g., 5 Whys, Fishbone) is a plus.