Payroll Manager, Sona
ÂŁ70-80k
+ Equity
2+ days a week in office
AI-powered people operating system for frontline teams
Job no longer available
AI-powered people operating system for frontline teams
101-200 employees
Job no longer available
ÂŁ70-80k
+ Equity
2+ days a week in office
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
- Proven, hands-on experience as a Payroll Manager, including in bureau/outsourced environments with enterprise clients
- Strong track record coaching and developing a payroll team, combining technical knowledge with people management
- Comfortable managing the variability of multiple payrolls across different industries within a bureau
- Strong background in payroll compliance and audit, with good working knowledge of payroll/HR systems and GL structures
- Bonus: Republic of Ireland payroll experience, CIPP qualification (or working towards one), demonstrable use of AI to automate payroll work
What the job involves
- We're growing our payroll bureau fast and looking for a Payroll Manager to lead a team of Payroll Specialists, driving accuracy, compliance and client experience across their portfolio
- This is a people-management role: you'll coach and develop your team, own escalations, and stay hands-on with payroll when it matters
- You'll also be a driving force behind automation and continuous improvement, using AI to cut manual effort and building best-practice, auditable payroll flows as you go
- Lead, coach and develop a team of Senior Payroll Specialists, Payroll Specialists and Payroll Assistants, signing off their output before it reaches clients
- Act as senior point of contact for your team's client payrolls, stepping in hands-on for onboarding or escalations
- Advise clients directly on legislative and regulatory change, and keep the team compliant with a regular gap analysis
- Own the team's support ticket queue and drive continuous improvement against KPIs and SLAs
- Lead incident resolution and root-cause analysis, escalating major issues to the Head of Payroll Bureau
- Identify and implement AI and automation opportunities, and coach the team to build their own
- Ensure Tax Year-End processing is accurate and on time, and review the team's BACS payments
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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