Payroll Specialist, Sona
ÂŁ35-45k
+ Equity
2+ days a week in office (Soho, London)
AI-powered people operating system for frontline teams
Posted today
AI-powered people operating system for frontline teams
101-200 employees
Posted today
ÂŁ35-45k
+ Equity
2+ days a week in office (Soho, London)
101-200 employees
Company mission
To solve the unique challenges of frontline work with truly intelligent AI that empowers every employee.
Role
Who you are
- 2+ years hands-on experience processing multiple UK payrolls independently
- Experience within a bureau or outsourced payroll environment is a bonus
- Good working knowledge of UK payroll and tax compliance, including tax calculations and filing and payment requirements
- Confident managing a busy queue of support tickets, with strong organisational skills and clear written and verbal communication
- Comfortable in Excel (VLOOKUPs, pivot tables, concatenation) and Google Suite
- Methodical and accurate under volume, and quick to flag issues rather than let them become problems
- Bonus: CIPP or equivalent qualification, exposure to Irish payroll (PAYE, PRSI, USC), or confidence using AI tools in your day-to-day work
What the job involves
- We're hiring a Payroll Specialist to join Sona's payroll bureau, taking hands-on ownership of UK payroll processing for a portfolio of our customers
- Our bureau is growing fast. We're moving from around 15,000 payslips a month to roughly 22,000 by the start of Q4, driven by new customer go-lives in hospitality and care
- That means the pace of the role is genuinely high, and we're hiring ahead of that curve rather than catching up after the fact
- Day to day, you'll manage a portfolio of standard and mid-complexity clients across multiple pay frequencies: statutory payments, pension auto-enrolment, HMRC filings and payroll journal reconciliation
- You'll also handle client queries through our support desk, working to fast turnaround times
- Your work is checked by a Senior Payroll Specialist before it reaches clients, as part of our standard quality process
- This isn't a conventional bureau role. Sona is a startup and the payroll team is still building its own processes and tools, so there's genuine room to shape how things work and to grow as the bureau scales
- You'll be working on a product in a sector most software has ignored, and once you're through probation we support CIPP study through the apprenticeship levy
- Own end-to-end UK payroll processing for a portfolio of Sona customers across multiple pay frequencies, covering standard and mid-complexity clients
- Manage payroll queries through our support desk, giving clients fast, proactive updates and resolving within SLA
- Process statutory payments, court orders, standard holiday pay calculations, Alabaster reviews and NMW checks for your own portfolio
- Handle workplace pension auto-enrolment, contributions, reconciliations and submissions, flagging any miscalculated contributions for investigation
- Upload, reconcile and submit payments across BACS, Faster Payments and SEPA, and manage payroll journal uploads and reconciliations
- Manage HMRC filings (FPS, EPS) and year-end processing for your portfolio, escalating disputed or mis-allocated PAYE cases to your Senior or the Payroll Manager
- Build strong working relationships with clients, including attending client meetings when needed, and flag product bugs to Engineering as you spot them
- Spot and flag process gaps or improvements within your own portfolio, and support Payroll Assistants and Senior Payroll Specialists with day-to-day queries
Salary benchmarks
Our take
80% of people don’t work at desks, but the technology for deskless workers only attracts 1% of all enterprise software investment. Consequently, little software has been designed to benefit the frontline. Sona is a workforce technology startup setting out to help solve this issue, building an all-in-one platform specially designed to empower frontline workers and help their employers retain staff and operate more efficiently.
By using its app, users can view and claim shifts, communicate with their colleagues, and book holidays. Moreover, Sona has additional modules for HR, Payroll, and Engagement, so customers can manage all of their people operations in one place, or integrate with their existing tools.
Sona is an early-stage startup, yet already counts big names across Social Care, Hospitality, and the Charities sector who have combined to book millions of shifts on the Sona platform.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Company
Funding (last 2 of 4 rounds)
Apr 2026
$45m
SERIES B
May 2024
$27.5m
SERIES A
Total funding: $81.7m
Company benefits
- Share options
- 35 days annual leave (25 days standard plus 10 flexible public holiday days)
- Pension contributions matched up to 5%
- Enhanced parental leave & pay - 26 weeks full pay primary parent / 8 weeks full pay secondary parent
- Annual all expenses paid team retreats
- The latest Macbook and equipment for your home office
- Professional development budget
- Unlimited free books
- Comprehensive health insurance via Bupa
Company HQ
Fitzrovia, London, UK
Articles
Leadership
Ben Dixon
(Co-Founder & CTO)Previously Associate - Consulting at PWC and Software Engineer at Thorlabs. Also, Co-Founder & CTO at Catapult Ventures Limited for 6 years.
Oli Johnson
(Co-Founder)Previously Associate at NEO Capital and Investment Manager at Baugur Group. Co-Founder at Catapult for 6 years.
Steffen Wulff Petersen
(Co-Founder)Previously Investment Banker at Goldman Sachs for 2 years. Since then has been Co-Founder & Managing Director at Lazada Group and Co-Founder at Catapult.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Sona
- Fully remote work and total control over your schedule means you can excel at Sona no matter where, when, or how you like to work. We also offer extended parental leave to everyone.
- We're partnered with the Women in Tech Forum, a membership platform dedicated to supporting and accelerating the careers of women. Optional memberships are available to all women and allies at Sona to access their wide range of events, masterclasses, articles, and more.
- Salary transparency across all of our job postings means your offer is based on your experience and interview performance, not your previous salary or your negotiating skills.
- We use structured interview processes and assessment criteria to remove as much bias from our process as possible
- We do all of our collaborative work in public channels, which means everyone gets a say and the recognition they deserve, and nobody's out of the loop.
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