Senior Payroll Specialist

• Own payroll processing and the customer relationship end-to-end for a portfolio of Sona's frontline enterprise customers as part of a fast-growing payroll bureau. • Work in a startup that is already more AI-forward in how it runs payroll than any other bureau, helping push that further. • Have real ownership and real opportunity as the bureau scales, building processes, tools, and ways of working rather than following a pre-written playbook.

• Have hands-on bureau payroll experience, processing for multiple clients rather than running a single in-house payroll. • Have strong working knowledge of UK payroll legislation including PAYE, RTI, pension auto-enrolment, and statutory payments. • Be comfortable managing multiple concurrent payrolls at volume and across different pay cycles. • Be assured and expert with clients, operating as a trusted advisor on payroll matters. • Be genuinely curious and self-sufficient, researching, questioning inefficiencies, and bringing ideas rather than needing a playbook handed to you. • Be genuinely motivated by a startup environment where you help build the processes rather than just follow them.

• Be CIPP qualified or working towards it. • Have high-volume or multi-sector bureau experience. • Have experience building or improving payroll tools and processes, including with AI. • Have some Ireland payroll exposure.

• Run end-to-end payrolls for a growing portfolio of enterprise customers with complex requirements spanning hourly rates, overtime, and weekly, fortnightly, or monthly cycles. • Own client relationships as their primary point of contact, giving them confidence in the service. • Identify opportunities to improve how the team works, including where AI can help, and help put those improvements into practice. • Act as a payroll expert in support of sales, helping prospective customers understand how the bureau operates. • Collaborate across Sona from Implementation and Product to Customer Success and Support. • Develop a strong working knowledge of the HR and WFM platform and how it connects to payroll. • Monitor KPIs, SLAs, and compliance to ensure the highest standard of service. • Stay current on the legislation, tools, and trends that shape how payroll is run.

Sona is one of the most exciting B2B SaaS companies in the UK right now. The company has raised over $100 million from world-class investors and has grown revenue by 400% in 2023 alone. Two of the three founders, Oli Johnson and Ben Dixon, previously spent six years building Catapult, a gig platform for hospitality and retail, while Steffen Wulff Petersen came from Rocket Internet, where he helped launch Lazada, HelloFresh and Payleven. That domain expertise is a genuine differentiator: Sona is not a generic scheduling tool bolted onto HR. It is built from the ground up for complex, multi-site enterprises with hundreds or thousands of frontline staff. What stands out on Glassdoor (4.6/5 from 26 reviews, 88% recommend, 94% positive business outlook) is how consistently employees praise the team culture, the benefits and the pace of growth. The compensation sub-score is a remarkable 4.9/5. Sona offers genuinely strong benefits for a startup: Bupa health insurance, 25 days holiday plus 10 flexible public holidays (with an extra day per year of service), enhanced parental leave (26 weeks full pay for primary parents, 8 weeks for secondary), share options, pension matching up to 5%, twice-yearly team retreats and a quarterly £200 learning budget. The main things to be aware of: this is a fast-paced startup where priorities shift quickly; some reviews mention long hours and pressure around headcount management; and the team is still relatively small, at around 150 people. But with a fresh $45 million Series B led by N47, US expansion underway, and the recent launch of Forge, an enterprise AI application builder that lets customers create custom software on top of Sona's platform, the company is at a genuinely exciting inflexion point.

• Work hybrid with 2+ days per week in the London Soho office. • Receive share options. • Receive 35 days annual leave including 25 days standard plus 10 flexible public holiday days. • Receive an extra day of leave for every year of service. • Receive pension contributions matched up to 5%. • Receive comprehensive health insurance. • Receive enhanced parental leave and pay. • Access salary sacrifice childcare scheme through Workplace Nursery. • Attend annual all-expenses-paid team retreats. • Receive the latest MacBook and equipment budget for your home office. • Receive a professional development budget and unlimited free books.

Sona is the next generation of AI-native, frontline workforce management. The company has built an end-to-end platform covering Scheduling, HR, Payroll, and Communications that gives the largest frontline organisations everything they need to staff more intelligently and empower their teams. In under 5 years, Sona has made a deep impact on over 100k frontline workers, grown the team to 160+, and secured over $100M in funding from notable VCs including N47, Felicis, Northzone, and Gradient Ventures.