Overview
Payroll Manager, APAC Jobs in Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at Confidential
Title: Payroll Manager, APAC
Company: Confidential
Location: Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
About the Role & Team
We are seeking an experienced Payroll Manager to lead payroll operations across the APAC region. This role is responsible for end-to-end payroll governance for 13 legal entities, with all entities outsourced to external service providers except for China and Singapore processed in-house. The Payroll Manager, APAC will lead a regional team of 3-4 payroll professionals, while partnering closely with HR, Variable Compensation, Finance, Treasury, and external service providers to deliver accurate, compliant, and timely payroll.
Role Summary
- Own and continuously improve payroll operations across APAC region, balancing strong execution, compliance, controls, and employee experience.
- Foster teamwork and collaboration across internal and external stakeholders, including HR, Variable Compensation, Finance, Treasury, and external service providers.
- Champion modernization of payroll workflows through AI automation, process standardization, and practical use of modern tools and analytics.
What You’ll Do
- Lead end-to-end payroll operations for 13 APAC entities, ensuring each payroll cycle is completed accurately, on time, and in full compliance with local statutory requirements.
- Manage and develop a regional payroll team of 3-4 professionals, providing clear priorities, coaching, quality review, and effective workload management across countries and payroll calendars.
- Oversee both outsourced and in-house payroll models, including governance of external payroll providers, service quality, escalation handling, and continuous improvement of vendor performance.
- Coordinate payroll inputs from HR, Variable Compensation, time and attendance, leave, benefits, and termination or severance data, ensuring all pay elements are complete, validated, and properly documented before payroll processing.
- Review payroll calculations, gross-to-net results, payroll registers, statutory deductions, and funding summaries to ensure accuracy of employee payments as well as payments to tax authorities, government agencies, and pension or social security bodies.
- Partner closely with Treasury and Finance to ensure timely payroll funding and cash disbursement execution for employees and third parties.
- Ensure payroll data is mapped correctly to payroll registers and downstream accounting, including accurate pay element coding and alignment to general ledger requirements.
- Maintain strong internal controls across the payroll lifecycle, including data validation, change controls, reconciliations, exception review, audit readiness, and process documentation.
- Monitor APAC payroll compliance obligations, including local tax, statutory filing, social contributions, record retention, and employment-related payroll requirements, escalating risks proactively.
- Drive standardization and process optimization across APAC payroll operations, identifying opportunities to streamline workflows, reduce manual effort, improve reporting, and strengthen service delivery.
- Explore and implement AI automation and modern payroll tools where appropriate to improve productivity, data quality, controls, and employee or stakeholder experience.
- Support payroll-related reporting, trend analysis, and operational insights for regional leadership, including recurring metrics, issue tracking, and opportunities for process improvement.
- Support internal and external payroll and related audits.
What You Bring
- Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Human Resources, Business, or a related discipline; relevant payroll certifications are a plus.
- Significant payroll management experience with strong hands-on knowledge of APAC payroll operations across multiple countries and legal entities. Experience in an APAC payroll shared service team is a plus.
- Demonstrated understanding of payroll tax, statutory compliance, and employment-related payroll requirements across APAC jurisdictions.
- Experience working in a regional or global organization with a mix of in-house and outsourced payroll environments.
- Proven people leadership experience, including leading distributed teams and developing payroll professionals across locations.
- Strong stakeholder management skills with the ability to work effectively across HR, Finance, Treasury, Tax, Legal, and external payroll providers.
- Solid understanding of payroll controls, reconciliations, payroll accounting interfaces, and general ledger coding principles.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities, with high attention to detail and a proactive, risk-aware mindset.
- Comfortable working in a fast-paced, evolving environment and able to manage multiple payroll cycles, deadlines, and competing priorities.
- Interest in process improvement, digital transformation, and the practical application of AI automation and modern tools in payroll operations.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English; additional APAC language capability (such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean) is a plus.
