[Hiring] Senior Payroll & Compensation Specialist @Paleovalley & Wild Pastures

Role Description

Paleovalley and Wild Pastures are looking for an experienced Senior Payroll & Compensation Specialist to own payroll operations and play a key role in administering and strengthening our evolving compensation programs. This role serves as our internal payroll subject-matter expert for a growing, multi-state workforce while partnering closely with the Director of HR to support market benchmarking, job leveling, salary structures, compensation cycles, and pay analysis.

This is a hands-on senior individual contributor role for someone with deep payroll expertise and meaningful experience supporting compensation processes. You don’t need to be a career compensation expert, but you should understand how compensation programs work, be comfortable benchmarking roles using market data and compensation tools, and be excited to deepen your expertise as we continue building a thoughtful, scalable compensation framework.

What You’ll Do

• Payroll Operations & Compliance
  • Own and independently process regular, off-cycle, special, and final payrolls in Rippling for employees across 20+ states, ensuring accurate, timely, and compliant pay.
  • Audit payroll inputs and results, including employee changes, timekeeping, deductions, garnishments, reimbursements, bonuses, PTO payouts, and other payroll-impacting activity.
  • Manage international contractor setup and payments across multiple countries, including documentation, corrections, and issue resolution.
  • Serve as the primary point of contact for payroll questions, independently researching and resolving pay, withholding, deduction, and other payroll issues.
  • Maintain current knowledge of federal, state, and local payroll requirements, including wage payment, final pay, payroll tax, deductions, garnishments, and recordkeeping.
  • Own payroll tax registrations and account maintenance across applicable jurisdictions, including agency notices, corrections, and quarter-end and year-end activities.
  • Serve as the internal Rippling Payroll subject-matter expert, maintaining payroll workflows, controls, documentation, and system configurations while driving process improvements.
• Compensation Administration & Analysis
  • Partner with the Director of HR to administer and strengthen the company’s compensation framework, including job levels, salary ranges, geographic pay practices, and related processes.
  • Benchmark roles using Payscale and other market data, evaluating job scope, level, geography, and internal context to support consistent compensation recommendations.
  • Support job leveling and pricing by reviewing responsibilities, organizational scope, market benchmarks, and internal comparisons.
  • Maintain compensation data, salary ranges, market benchmarks, job-leveling records, and supporting documentation.
  • Support annual compensation planning and review cycles, including data preparation, market analysis, manager resources, system administration, reporting, and implementation.
  • Analyze compensation data to identify market positioning, internal equity considerations, pay trends, and potential inconsistencies to support HR decision-making.
  • Administer approved promotions, market adjustments, bonuses, and other compensation changes, ensuring accurate documentation, HRIS updates, and payroll execution.
• Reporting, Controls & Partnership
  • Prepare payroll reconciliations, funding information, approval packages, journal entry support, compensation reports, and audit-ready documentation.
  • Identify recurring payroll or compensation errors, trends, and control gaps and implement practical improvements to strengthen accuracy and data integrity.
  • Partner across HR, Finance, Compliance, and business leaders to ensure payroll and compensation processes remain accurate, compliant, and scalable as the organization grows.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of hands-on, end-to-end payroll experience, including 2+ years of independent ownership of payroll for a complex, multi-state U.S. workforce.
• Bachelor’s degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, Finance, Accounting, or a related field preferred; equivalent relevant experience may be considered in lieu of a degree.
• Meaningful experience supporting compensation processes such as market benchmarking, job pricing, salary ranges, compensation analysis, annual compensation cycles, or pay adjustments.
• Experience using compensation benchmarking tools and market data to evaluate competitive pay; Payscale experience strongly preferred.
• Working knowledge of compensation concepts including market positioning, job leveling, salary ranges, geographic differentials, internal equity, and benchmarking.
• Strong knowledge of federal, state, and local payroll requirements, including wage payment, final pay, payroll taxes, deductions, garnishments, recordkeeping, and year-end reporting.
• Experience supporting hourly and salaried populations, including timekeeping, variable pay, bonuses, and other payroll-related wage and hour considerations.
• Strong analytical and spreadsheet skills with the ability to reconcile complex data, identify trends, and translate payroll and market data into useful insights.
• Sound judgment and ability to independently resolve complex payroll issues, thoughtfully analyze compensation questions, and escalate strategic or higher-risk matters appropriately.
• Exceptional attention to detail, organization, discretion, and communication when handling confidential payroll and compensation information.

Bonus Points

• Fundamental Payroll Certification (FPC), Certified Payroll Professional (CPP), Certified Compensation Professional (CCP), or progress toward a relevant certification.
• Hands-on Payscale experience with market pricing, compensation benchmarking, salary range analysis, or related compensation work.
• Experience processing payroll for employees in California, with familiarity with California-specific payroll requirements and regulations.
• Experience supporting the development or implementation of a compensation framework, job architecture, leveling structure, or salary range methodology.
• Experience supporting annual merit or compensation review cycles, including analysis, data validation, manager tools, reporting, and implementation.
• Experience processing payroll within Rippling, including experience with Global Contractors, Contractor of Record, global payroll, or multi-currency contractor payments.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage with 100% employer-paid dental/vision and a small monthly medical premium for employees; dependents may be added at employee cost.
• Generous Paid time off to support balance and rest.
• Paid sick time for when you need it.
• Six (6) company-paid holidays each year & two (2) floating holidays.
• Paid parental leave after 6 months of service for eligible employees.
• 100% company-paid Short-Term Disability, Long-Term Disability, and Life Insurance.
• Referral bonuses up to $1,500 when you refer great people who join our team.
• 401(k) or Roth Plans with up to a 4% company match after one year of service.
• $300 Paleovalley Monthly product stipend for employees.