Payroll Implementation Manager

Frontline work keeps the world running. Restaurants, hospitals, schools, nurseries, airlines, stores, emergency services. Together they employ 80% of the global workforce, over 3 billion people, and they're among the hardest businesses anywhere to run. By-the-minute scheduling, HR and payroll make them far more operationally complex than the average office, yet just 1% of venture funding has ever gone to software built for them.

 

Rising costs, wage increases, labour shortages and tighter regulation have made fixing that urgent. Sona is the AI-native workforce management platform for frontline organisations, with agents that match staffing to real demand and take the admin load off managers. That's a $500bn+ market the software industry has mostly walked past.

 

We've raised over $100M from N47, Felicis, Gradient and Northzone, signed more than 100 enterprise customers across the UK and US, and opened offices in London, New York, Austin and Lisbon. More on working at Sona here.

 

About the Role

 

As a Payroll Implementation Manager at Sona, you're the person a customer deals with directly as their payroll goes live: discovery, system configuration, parallel runs, training, go-live. You're the face of Sona at the moment that matters most to them, and everything you configure has a direct, visible effect on someone's payslip.

You'll work day-to-day with a project manager, the payroll implementation team and our payroll bureau colleagues, one of the most collaborative groups in the business, with direct access to the product team.

We use AI in ways most payroll providers haven't got close to yet: in reconciliation, in configuration checks, in the everyday admin that eats weeks. You'd be using this now, not waiting on a roadmap or permission. Sona's just been shortlisted for Tech Product of the Year 2026 and selected for Tech Nation's Future Fifty cohort, real recognition of the pace this team moves at.

There's a genuine path up from here too. With more customers every day this function grows, and that's the shape of what's opening up: more implementers, more structure, more senior roles as the team scales.

 

Responsibilities

 

• Own payroll implementations end to end: discovery, system configuration, parallel runs, training, and go-live

• Configure and troubleshoot UK payroll setups, including GL and pensions configuration and RTI processing

• Spot opportunities to improve the process and see them through yourself

• Work alongside Project Managers and Solutions Architects on the wider implementation journey

• Travel to customer sites for training and launch support, alongside remote delivery

• Use AI in your day to day work: reconciliation, communication, wherever it actually speeds things up

 

Requirements

• Hands-on experience implementing UK payroll systems end to end

• Real working knowledge of UK payroll legislation and processing

• Curious, and genuinely comfortable with ambiguity

• High attention to detail and real accountability

• Excited about using AI in everyday tools like spreadsheets, communications, and reconciliation

• Bonus: CIPP (or equivalent) qualification, or working towards one

Benefits

 

• Salary: £50,000 - £60,000

• London, hybrid - 2 days a week in the office, with occasional travel to UK customer sites for training and launch support

• Share options

• 35 days annual leave (25 days standard plus 10 flexible public holiday days)

• Extra day of leave for every year of service

• Pension contributions matched up to 5%

• Comprehensive health insurance

• Enhanced parental leave & pay

• Workplace nursery salary sacrifice scheme

• Annual all expenses paid team retreats

• The latest Macbook and equipment budget for your home office

• Professional development budget

• Unlimited free books

Note: this represents a typical benefits package for a UK-based, full-time employee. Exact details may vary based on location and employment type but we try to be as fair as possible to all of our team members. Please ask your contact in the Talent team to clarify the available benefits for you.