Payroll Specialist (ANZ)

About the role

Rippling is continuing to scale its Global Payroll product in New Zealand. While product enhancements are being delivered to meet updated NZ compliance specifications (targeted for 2028), we are establishing a dedicated compliance oversight service for Rippling customers.

We’re looking for an experienced ANZ Payroll Compliance Specialist to oversee and mitigate compliance risk for clients using the Rippling Global Payroll product, with a primary focus in New Zealand.

In this role, you will act as a controlled compliance layer between customer payroll preparation and final payroll processing. You will provide hands-on payroll review, perform manual calculations where required, validate system outputs, and ensure adherence to NZ legislative requirements including the Holidays Act 2003, KiwiSaver, PAYE, ESCT, and leave entitlements.

This role is ideal for a payroll professional with New Zealand expertise. You will have extensive experience and understanding of the NZ Holidays Act and be comfortable working directly with customers while partnering internally with Product and Compliance to reduce risk and improve long-term scalability.

What you will do

Payroll compliance oversight

• Review payroll changes submitted by NZ customers prior to processing
• Identify impacted records, including terminations, unpaid leave, parental leave, public holidays, excess hours, and leave spanning pay periods
• Validate and manually calculate where required:
• • Termination payments (including annual leave and final pay components)
  • KiwiSaver deductions, including excess hours and termination payments
  • PAYE overrides on termination runs
  • ESCT rate selection at implementation and tax year rollover (1 April)
• Apply and document overrides where required
• Provide documented approval summaries prior to payroll finalisation

Holidays Act & leave governance

• Review Annual Leave rate calculations, including OWP, AWE, and identification of OWP-4 gaps
• Manually calculate annual leave rates where:
• • Unpaid leave has occurred
  • Parental leave has occurred
  • Leave spans multiple pay periods
  • OWP-4 calculations are required
• Oversee legislated and custom paid leave:
• • For leave covered under RDP and ADP rate calculations, assess system-generated values and override where required
  • For hourly staff, manually add leave taken into the pay run where it does not flow automatically
• Manage and monitor:
• • Sick leave anniversary policies to prevent over-entitlement
  • Casual employee 8% pay-as-you-go compliance
  • Public holiday eligibility and alternative holiday accrual and balances

Customer communication & risk management

• Communicate identified compliance risks to customers clearly and proactively
• Document manual overrides and calculation methodology for audit defensibility
• Support escalation resolution where compliance errors occur
• Act as the compliance point of contact for assigned customers, under oversight of the NZ Compliance Lead

Reporting & process improvement

• Extract payroll data and perform compliance checks using Excel and manual analysis
• Identify repeat friction points and systemic risks across customer cohorts
• Partner with Product and Engineering to:
• • Document compliance gaps
  • Recommend reporting improvements
  • Improve visibility into payroll changes requiring review
• Contribute to a structured mitigation framework to ensure audit readiness until product resolution
• Other tasks as required

What you will need

Payroll expertise

• 5+ years of hands-on NZ payroll experience
• Demonstrated knowledge of:
• • Holidays Act 2003 calculations (OWP, AWE, termination payments, OWP-4)
  • KiwiSaver (including ESCT treatment)
  • PAYE treatment on termination
  • Leave entitlement policy design and anniversary management
• Demonstrated experience performing manual termination calculations
• Experience reviewing and overriding payroll outputs

Compliance & analytical skills

• Strong ability to identify regulatory risk in payroll outputs
• High attention to detail and comfort working with manual calculations
• Advanced Excel capability for data extraction and validation
• Ability to document methodology clearly for audit purposes

Collaboration & communication

• Experienced and confident working directly with customers in a compliance-facing capacity
• Ability to explain complex Holidays Act and payroll concepts clearly
• Experience partnering cross-functionally with Compliance, Product, and Engineering
• Strong sense of ownership and accountability for assigned customer risk

Success measures

• Zero regulatory breaches across assigned GP customers
• Reduction in payroll-related escalations
• Clear and consistent documentation of manual interventions
• Established and maintained audit-ready mitigation framework through product resolution
• Improved reporting visibility and reduction in repeat manual corrections over time
• Customer feedback and CSAT