European Payroll Service Delivery Manager

Job Description

European Payroll Service Delivery Manager

Location - Europe (Hybrid / Remote)

Reporting to: Global Head of Payroll & Benefits

Are you motivated by ensuring employees are paid accurately, compliantly, and on time across multiple countries? Are you excited by building scalable payroll service governance, strong vendor partnerships, and technology-enabled ways of working? Are you a collaborative leader who enjoys influencing stakeholders and driving continuous improvement?

If this sounds like you, or you’re curious to learn more, then this role could be the perfect opportunity. Join our Payroll & Benefits team as our new European Payroll Service Delivery Manager and work with us to close the gap to a sustainable future.

Your new role

As our new European Payroll Service Delivery Manager, you will ensure the successful delivery of payroll services across Europe, acting as the primary interface between Ramboll, payroll vendors and their local subcontractors, HR, Finance, ICT, and other key stakeholders. You will be part of our Global Payroll & Benefits function, working across a European hybrid and remote delivery model. In this role, you will own service performance, vendor governance, escalations, operational continuity, and continuous improvement initiatives. You will lead service governance, support payroll transformation and country implementations, and help strengthen processes, controls, and knowledge management across Ramboll’s European payroll landscape. This is a strong opportunity to shape payroll service excellence in a global, foundation-owned organisation where people, sustainability, and long-term thinking guide how we work.

Your key responsibilities will be:

• Owning the operational and governance relationship with external payroll providers, including service scope, contractual commitments, out-of-scope requests, and vendor accountability.
• Managing payroll service performance through SLAs, KPIs, payroll calendars, governance meetings, root-cause analysis, corrective actions, and continuous service improvement.
• Acting as a key escalation and stakeholder contact for HR, Finance, ICT, vendors, and senior business stakeholders across Europe, providing clear communication on risks, issues, upcoming changes, and improvement initiatives.
• Supporting payroll transformation, new country onboarding, acquisitions, integrations, payroll migrations, automation, AI-enabled improvements, and service readiness activities.
• Maintaining strong payroll governance, controls, audit readiness, compliance-risk oversight, operating procedures, knowledge transfer, disaster recovery planning, and service continuity.

About you

• Experience managing multi-country payroll operations or payroll service delivery, ideally within an outsourced or vendor-led operating model.
• Experience managing third-party payroll vendors, service contracts, SLAs, KPIs, governance forums, and performance improvement activities.
• Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills, with the ability to work confidently with HR, Finance, ICT, vendors, and senior business leaders.
• Proven ability to lead service governance, incident management, project delivery, service recovery, continuous improvement, and change initiatives.
• Excellent communication skills in English and German.

It would also be beneficial if you have experience with Workday, Papaya Global, ServiceNow, or similar HR/payroll technologies, experience within a shared services or global business services environment, a payroll qualification such as CIPP, IPASS or equivalent, or knowledge of European payroll compliance requirements.

What we can offer you

• Flexible work environment, including hybrid or remote ways of working where relevant to the role and location.
• Commitment to your development.
• Leaders guided by our Leadership Principles.
• A culture that welcomes you as the unique person you are.
• Inspiration from colleagues, clients, and projects.
• The long-term thinking of a foundation-owned company.
• The opportunity to shape payroll service excellence across Europe.
• Collaboration with international stakeholders and exposure to modern HR and payroll technologies.