Director, MSO Payroll

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Job Details

The Director, MSO Payroll is a strategic leader responsible for overseeing payroll operations delivered through ADP COS (Lyric) Payroll, supported by a Workday-to-ADP data bridge. This role is heavily focused on vendor governance, service delivery optimization, and risk mitigation, ensuring seamless payroll execution through strong partnership with ADP, vendors, and internal stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities

Vendor Management & Governance:

• Serve as the primary relationship owner for ADP COS Lyric Payroll, ensuring service delivery aligns with contractual SLAs, KPIs, and business expectations

• Lead recurring vendor governance meetings, including operational reviews, service issue escalation, and continuous improvement planning

• Manage contract adherence and drive accountability for payroll accuracy, timeliness, and compliance

• Partner with procurement and legal teams on vendor performance evaluations, renewals, and enhancements

• Oversee incident management processes, ensuring root cause analysis and remediation plans are executed

Strategic Payroll Oversight:

• Define and execute the payroll strategy aligned to organizational goals, focusing on outsourcing optimization

• Provide oversight of payroll operations without direct processing responsibilities

• Ensure robust controls across payroll lifecycle: data intake, validation, processing, and post-payroll reconciliation

• Drive standardization, automation, and process improvement initiatives in partnership with ADP and HRIS teams

Workday–ADP Integration Leadership:

• Own governance of the Workday HR data bridge to ADP COS Service team, ensuring data integrity across systems

• Collaborate with HRIS, IT, and ADP to manage integration changes, enhancements, and issue resolution

• Monitor upstream data quality from Workday (hires, terminations, comp, benefits) impacting payroll

Compliance & Risk Management:

• Ensure compliance with federal, state, and local payroll regulations through vendor oversight

• Establish and maintain internal controls, audit readiness, and SOX compliance (if applicable)

• Oversee year-end activities (W-2, tax filings) through ADP relationship management

Leadership & Stakeholder Partnership:

• Act as the executive escalation point for payroll-related issues

• Partner with HR, Finance, Benefits, and IT to ensure alignment of payroll processes

• Communicate payroll performance metrics and risks to senior leadership

• Build and mentor a team focused on audit, validation, and vendor collaboration

Education and Work Experience

• College degree in Finance, Accounting, HR, or related field

• 10+ years payroll leadership experience, with significant exposure to outsourced payroll models

• Expertise managing payroll in a large, nationwide organization and vendor-managed payroll environments

• Experience with Workday HCM and payroll integrations

• Strong background in vendor governance, SLA/KPI management, and contract oversight

• Knowledge of multi-state payroll compliance and regulatory requirements

• Exceptional communication, negotiation, and leadership skills

• FPC (Fundamental Payroll Certification) or CPP (Certified Payroll Professional) certification

• Experience managing multi-entity payroll environments

• Background in transformation or payroll outsourcing transitions

Skills and Knowledge

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively across departments and global teams.

• Strong interpersonal skills, with the ability to build and maintain strong internal and external stakeholder relationships at all levels.

• Strong organizational, time management, and prioritization skills, with the ability to multitask and adapt in a changing environment.

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with proven process improvement capability to identify and execute continuous improvement opportunities across functions.

• Advanced project management skills, with a proven track record leading large-scale deployments and driving delivery against scope, timeline, and quality expectations.

• Deep understanding of payroll systems (ADP, Workday), HRIS, and related technologies, including experience with system integration and data migration.

• High attention to detail to ensure accuracy, compliance, and control adherence in payroll processes.

• Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Excel and strong proficiency in Outlook, Word, and PowerPoint, with experience using Smartsheet.

This is a Remote eligible position in the United States.

What Cencora offers

We provide compensation, benefits, and resources that enable a highly inclusive culture and support our team members’ ability to live with purpose every day. In addition to traditional offerings like medical, dental, and vision care, we also provide a comprehensive suite of benefits that focus on the physical, emotional, financial, and social aspects of wellness. This encompasses support for working families, which may include backup dependent care, adoption assistance, infertility coverage, family building support, behavioral health solutions, paid parental leave, and paid caregiver leave. To encourage your personal growth, we also offer a variety of training programs, professional development resources, and opportunities to participate in mentorship programs, employee resource groups, volunteer activities, and much more. For details, visit

Salary Range*

*This Salary Range reflects a National Average for this job. The actual range may vary based on your locale. Ranges in Colorado/California/Washington/NewYork/Hawaii/Vermont/Minnesota/Massachusetts/Illinois State-specific locations may be up to 10% lower than the minimum salary range, and 12% higher than the maximum salary range.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Cencora is committed to providing equal employment opportunity without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, national origin, age, disability, veteran status or membership in any other class protected by federal, state or local law.

The company’s continued success depends on the full and effective utilization of qualified individuals. Therefore, harassment is prohibited and all matters related to recruiting, training, compensation, benefits, promotions and transfers comply with equal opportunity principles and are non-discriminatory.

Cencora is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities during the employment process which are consistent with legal requirements. If you wish to request an accommodation while seeking employment, please call 888.692.2272 or email . We will make accommodation determinations on a request-by-request basis. Messages and emails regarding anything other than accommodations requests will not be returned

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Originally posted on Himalayas