People Operations & Payroll Manager
At Pleo, we’re on a mission to revolutionise the way businesses manage company spending. No more outdated processes, clunky spreadsheets, or frustrating delays - we believe spend management should be seamless, empowering, and surprisingly effective for finance teams and employees alike. We’re creating tools that promote autonomy, foster trust, and let businesses focus on what truly matters.
Our culture is built on transparency, collaboration, and a deep commitment to innovation – which is reflected in our spending solution. At Pleo, you’ll join a passionate team shaping the future of work, all while having some fun along the way.
About the role
We're looking for a People Operations and Payroll Manager to join our People Platform Team at Pleo. In this role, you'll help keep our employee experience seamless, compliant, and human and be part of optimising our People Processes across all our geographies[team/project] as we scale. If you're excited about leading a team to ensure operational excellence and are passionate about delivering a thoughtful and seamless employee experience making internal people systems as smooth and thoughtful as the products we offer our customers, then this is the opportunity for you!”
What you’ll be doing
As a People Operations and Payroll Manager, you will:
- Team Leadership: Lead, mentor, and coach a team of People Operations specialists and Payroll Specialists, ensuring that requests are replied on time and with the right level of detail attention.
- Process Delivery & Improvement: Own and optimise all People Operations and Payroll processes (onboarding, off-boarding, contract changes, leaves, benefits administration, etc.). Ensure that we continuously improve our people operations & payroll processes to deliver a smooth and people-centric employee experience.
- Payroll: Oversee accurate and timely payroll processing across multiple countries, in partnership with Finance and external payroll providers
- Data Integrity: Ensure data integrity across HiBob, Papaya and connected systems, driving automation and efficiency.
- Policies: Ensure compliance with company policies, and internal regulations. Assist in the development and enforcement of people-related policies.
- 3rd party vendors: Manage the relationship with third-party vendors (eg: payroll, EoR) ensuring strong SLAs and continuous improvement..
- Prioritisation & Resource Allocation: Lead efforts in defining clear priorities for the People Operations and Payroll team, ensuring that the team’s resources are allocated effectively to drive key tasks.
What you bring
You'll thrive in this role if you have:
- Proven experience leading People Operations and Payroll teams in a multi-country/entity context
- Strong working knowledge of HRIS platforms, people analytics, and payroll systems
- Passion for scalable processes, and love spotting opportunities to optimise, automate, and streamline.
- Strong project management mindset and know how to roll out new tools and workflows with impact.
- Obsessed with accuracy, compliance, and process optimisation
- Strong knowledge of European labour and employment law and hands-on practice applying it in day-to-day operations
- Empathetic leader who’s comfortable navigating ambiguity and scaling complexity
- Experience working in fast-paced, high-growth environments (fintech/tech a plus)
- Strong stakeholder skills and working collaboratively across different teams
Who you’ll be working with and reporting to:
You’ll report to our People Platform Leader and work closely with teams such as Talent Acquisition, People Partnering, People Tech, Employee Experience, Finance, Tech Ops and many others. Our team of 7 is highly collaborative and dedicated to People Operations & Payroll.
Show me the benefits!
- Your own Pleo card (no more out-of-pocket spending!)
- Lunch is on us for your work days - enjoy catered meals or receive a lunch allowance based on your local office 🍜
- Comprehensive private healthcare - depending on your location, coverage options include Vitality, Alan or Médis
- We offer 25 days of holiday + your public holidays
- For our Team, we offer both hybrid and fully remote working options
- Option to purchase 5 additional days of holiday through a salary sacrifice
- We use MyndUp to give our employees access to free mental health and well-being support with great success so far ❤️🩹
- Access to LinkedIn Learning - acquire new skills, stay abreast of industry trends and fuel your personal and professional development continuously
- Paid parental leave - we want to make sure that we're supportive of families and help you feel that you don't have to compromise your family due to work 👶
Why join us?
Working at Pleo means you're working on something very exciting: the future of work. Our mission is to help every company go beyond the books. Pleo itself means ‘more than you’d expect’, and it’s been the secret to our success over the last 8 years. So it’s only fitting that we’d pass this philosophy onto our customers to help them make the most of their finances.
We think company spending should be delegated to all employees and teams, that it should be as automated as possible, and that it should drive a culture of responsible spending. Finance teams shouldn’t be siloed from the rest of the organisation – they should work in unity with marketing, sales, IT and everyone else.
Speaking of working in unity, our values tell the story of how we work at Pleo. We have four core values, the first of which is ‘champion the customer’, which means we address real pain points that businesses face. Next up is ‘succeed as a team’, which highlights how our strength lies in our diversity and trust in each other. We also ‘make it happen’ by taking bold decisions and following through to deliver results. Last but not least, we ‘build to scale’, creating lasting solutions that address today’s challenges and anticipate tomorrow’s needs.
So, in a nutshell, that's Pleo. Today we are a 850+ team, from over 100 nations, sitting in our Copenhagen HQ, London, Stockholm, Berlin, Madrid, Montreal and Lisbon offices —and quite a few full-time remotes in 35 other countries! Being HQ'd out of Copenhagen means we're inspired by things like a good work-life balance. If you don't work in the office with us, we'll help you set up the best remote setup possible and make sure you still have time to connect with your team.
About your application
- Please submit your application in English; it’s our company language so you’ll be speaking lots of it if you join 💕
- We treat all candidates equally: If you are interested please apply through our application system - any correspondence should come from there! Our lovely support isn't able to pass on any calls/ emails our way - and this makes sure that the candidate experience is smooth and fair to everyone 😊
- We’re on a mission to make everyone feel valued at work. That’s only achievable if our team reflects the diversity of the world around us - and that starts with you, hitting apply, even if you are worried you might not tick all the boxes! We embrace and encourage people from all backgrounds to apply - regardless of race/ethnicity, colour, religion, nationality, gender, sex, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, neurodiversity, socio-economic status, culture or beliefs.
- When you submit an application we process your personal data as a data processor. Find out more about how your data is used in the FAQs section at the bottom of our jobs page.
Got any questions?
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How Pleo hires
1
The first call(s)
Let’s get to know each other. We want to find out more about you, your motivations, and give you more information about the role.
2
The challenge
The task is deliberately open-ended and based on something you'll actually work on. There are no right or wrong answers here.
3
The team interview
Expect to share a (virtual) meeting room with two to three people you'll work with regularly if you get the job.
4
The final interview
A call with someone in leadership who’ll walk you through the big picture and chat about how your role will figure into that.
FAQ
This is a big decision for both of us. If you join us, we’ll spend a lot of time together working on some pretty cool things. That's why we've designed a hiring process that allows everyone to make the right choice. Read more about how we hire here.