Global Payroll & Equity Administration Director, Lilt
3 days a week in office
AI solution for enterprise translation and content creation
Be an early applicant
AI solution for enterprise translation and content creation
501-1000 employees
Be an early applicant
3 days a week in office
501-1000 employees
Company mission
To make the world's information accessible to everyone regardless of where they were born or which language they speak.
Role
Who you are
- 8+ years of progressive payroll experience, including global payroll ownership
- Experience operating at a senior level in a scaling or high-growth company
- Deep expertise in U.S. payroll tax compliance and multi-state registrations
- Direct experience administering equity programs through Carta
- Experience owning payroll systems, preferably Rippling
- Strong understanding of payroll controls, reconciliations, and audit processes
- Experience supporting payroll across the U.S., Ireland, U.K., Germany, and other international jurisdictions preferred
- Expertise in 401(k) administration, ERISA compliance, and retirement plan audits
- Experience managing workers’ compensation compliance and audits
- High integrity and discretion in handling confidential financial and employee data
- Advanced Excel/Google Sheets skills
- Ability to operate independently with executive visibility and accountability
What the job involves
- We are looking for a Global Payroll & Equity Administration Director to lead and fully own end-to-end global payroll operations through Rippling, DATEV, and equity administration through Carta, U.S. and international tax compliance, state registrations, retirement programs, and workers’ compensation administration
- This is a senior individual contributor role with full accountability for designing, operating, and continuously improving scalable, audit-ready payroll and compliance infrastructure. You will partner closely with Finance, People, Legal, external vendors, and executive leadership to ensure payroll, equity, and regulatory obligations are accurate, timely, compliant, and well-controlled across all jurisdictions
- This role requires both strategic ownership and hands-on execution
- Own and operate all global payroll cycles (biweekly, semimonthly, monthly) across multiple countries and worker types (exempt, nonexempt, contractors), approximately 12 to 14 per month
- Ensure payroll accuracy, completeness, timeliness, and documentation across all jurisdictions
- Establish and maintain strong payroll controls, audit trails, reconciliations, and documented procedures
- Partner with Finance on payroll funding, approvals, reporting, accruals, and month-end close
- Lead payroll reconciliations and support internal and external audits
- Design and continuously improve scalable payroll workflows as the company grows
- Oversee all U.S. federal, state, and local payroll tax filings and international statutory payroll requirements (in partnership with providers)
- Own multi-state employer registrations, account maintenance, and regulatory correspondence for all current and future operating jurisdictions
- Ensure proper tax setup and compliance for new state or international expansions
- Monitor regulatory changes and proactively adjust payroll processes to maintain compliance
- Maintain complete documentation to ensure audit readiness
- Coordinate responses to government inquiries related to payroll and tax matters
- Serve as primary administrator for Carta, owning cap table management and equity operations
- Manage equity grants, vesting schedules, exercises, terminations, and reporting
- Ensure accurate equity tax withholding and integration with payroll
- Support coordination of 409A valuations and support equity-related compliance requirements
- Partner with Finance and Legal on equity disclosures, financial reporting, and board reporting
- Maintain audit-ready documentation of all equity transactions
- Own end-to-end administration of the U.S. 401(k) plan, including eligibility tracking, enrollment oversight, contribution processing, employer match calculations, and timely funding
- Ensure payroll deductions and employer contributions are accurate, reconciled, and transmitted within regulatory deadlines
- Partner with plan providers (e.g., Fidelity) to maintain ERISA compliance
- Coordinate annual nondiscrimination testing (ADP/ACP, top-heavy testing) and audit support
- Oversee Form 5500 preparation and filing in partnership with external advisors
- Manage required employee notices, plan amendments, and documentation
- Ensure accurate integration between Rippling payroll and retirement plan systems
- Oversee U.K. and Ireland pension administration (e.g., People’s Partnership and Bank of Ireland), ensuring statutory compliance and accurate funding
- Own workers’ compensation administration across all U.S. operating states
- Ensure proper state registrations and coverage as the company expands geographically
- Coordinate policy renewals and audits with insurance brokers and carriers
- Oversee workers’ compensation payroll audits and ensure accurate wage reporting
- Manage claims administration in partnership with HR and carriers
- Monitor classification codes and ensure alignment with payroll reporting
- Maintain compliance with state-specific workers’ comp regulations and documentation requirements
- Partner with People on onboarding, compensation changes, bonuses, commissions, leave adjustments, and offboarding
- Respond to employee payroll and equity inquiries professionally and efficiently
- Serve as subject matter expert on payroll, equity, retirement, and compliance matters
- Provide executive-level reporting and insights on payroll risk, compliance exposure, and operational readiness
- Identify risk areas and proactively implement mitigation strategies
- Build redundancy, documentation, and scalable processes to reduce key-person risk
- What Success Looks Like
- Payroll is consistently accurate, on time, compliant, and audit-ready
- Equity administration is precise, transparent, and fully documented
- State registrations and tax filings are proactively managed
- Retirement plans pass compliance testing without remediation
- Workers’ compensation policies and audits are clean and reconciled
- Finance can reconcile payroll and equity cleanly and efficiently
- Risk exposure is minimized through strong controls and redundancy
- Processes are seamlessly scaled globally
Our take
Widely available tools like Google Translate are not fit for complex, operationally intense processes that require expert translations. The manual methods of yesterday can't scale with the volume of digital information produced in the world today. Lilt works with companies, schools, and government agencies to provide AI-powered enterprise language translation. Lilt’s platform combines a translation management system and neural machine translation with human language experts to create a “human-in-the-loop” approach.
While companies like AI Translate offer intelligent machine translations, they still have linguists fine-tune and correct the texts afterwards. With the Lilt platform, AI and humans work in collaboration through the text together, with the AI making real-time sentence suggestions and the linguist reviewing them immediately. This collaboration creates 3-5x better efficiency compared with traditional human-only translation services, aiding in Lilt's substantial rounds of funding.
Clients such as Asics, Canva, and Digital Ocean use Lilt technology for urgent campaigns and large-scale localisation projects. Recently, Lilt launched its V3.5 translation models, which improve quality by 15% to 20%, significantly enhancing translation accuracy and efficiency. Additionally, Lilt appointed a new Chief Revenue Officer to propel growth and scale, emphasising its commitment to expanding its market presence and improving its services further.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
2% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 4 rounds)
Apr 2022
$55m
SERIES C
May 2020
$25m
SERIES B
Total funding: $91.9m
Company benefits
- Compensation: Meaningful equity, 401(k) matching, and flexible time off plus company holidays
- Medical Benefits: Employees receive coverage of medical, dental, and vision insurance, plus FSA/DFSA, HSA, and Commuter benefits. In addition, LILT pays for basic life insurance, short-term disability, and long-term disability
- Paid parental leave is provided after 6 months
- Monthly lifestyle benefit stipend via the Fringe platform to allow employees to customize benefits to their lifestyle
Company HQ
Emeryville, CA
Leadership
John DeNero
(Co-Founder & Chief Scientist)Earned a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. Previously Teaching Professor at UC Berkeley for 7 years and Senior Research Scientist at Google for 4 years.
Spence Green
(CEO)Earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University. Previously Research Assistant - Computer Science at Stanford University for 6 years and Fellow at XSeed Capital for 1 year.
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