Director, Payroll

Director, Payroll | Enterprise Operations & Oracle Payroll

Nashville, Tennessee | Hybrid | $145,000–$160,000 Base Salary | Relocation Assistance Available

A large national healthcare organization is seeking a Director of Payroll who can lead at scale.

This is a highly visible enterprise leadership role with responsibility for payroll operations supporting approximately 55,000 employees nationwide, while also serving as the functional business leader for Oracle Payroll.

The organization has moved beyond implementation. The next chapter focuses on strengthening operations, optimizing Oracle Payroll, improving processes, solving problems, and continuing to build a more efficient enterprise payroll function.

For a payroll leader who understands both the operation and the system behind it, this is an opportunity to make a meaningful impact.

The Scale of the Role

You'll lead enterprise payroll operations across a large, complex, multi-state healthcare organization.

The payroll organization includes 2 Payroll Managers and approximately 40 indirect team members. This requires someone who can lead strategically while staying close enough to the operation to understand what's happening beneath the numbers.

Your leadership will span three interconnected areas:

Enterprise payroll operations
Ensure accurate, timely, and compliant payroll processing across multiple payroll cycles while strengthening the people, processes, controls, and operating discipline required to support approximately 55,000 employees.

Oracle Payroll ownership
Serve as the payroll business leader and functional expert for Oracle Payroll, partnering closely with HR, Finance, HRIS, and IT on quarterly releases, testing, validation, troubleshooting, enhancements, and system performance.

Optimization and transformation
Look beyond keeping payroll running. Identify where processes can be simplified, automated, standardized, or redesigned as the organization continues to mature its Oracle environment and bring additional payroll capabilities in-house.

Oracle Payroll Experience Is Essential

This is the most important technical requirement of the search.

You must have hands-on experience with Oracle Payroll operations.

We're looking for someone who has owned payroll after an Oracle Payroll implementation, not someone whose experience ended when the system went live.

You should have been directly involved in areas such as:

• Quarterly Oracle release testing and validation
• Payroll testing and issue resolution
• Troubleshooting production payroll problems
• Enhancement requests and functional improvements
• Post-go-live system optimization
• Payroll configuration and process decisions
• Partnership with HRIS and IT teams
• Translating payroll requirements into system functionality

Oracle Financials or ERP experience alone isn't sufficient. Neither is general Oracle HCM exposure without direct responsibility for Payroll.

Implementation or consulting experience without responsibility for ongoing payroll operations also won't provide the depth needed for this position.

The Leadership Background We're Seeking

The successful candidate will bring 10+ years of progressive payroll experience, including significant leadership responsibility within a large, complex organization.

Your background should include:

• Leadership of large-scale, multi-state payroll operations
• Direct experience leading payroll teams in an enterprise or shared-services environment
• Strong knowledge of federal, state, and local payroll compliance
• Understanding of payroll accounting, controls, reconciliation, and operational risk
• Experience partnering across HR, Finance, HRIS, IT, and other enterprise functions
• A track record of improving payroll processes rather than simply maintaining them
• Experience leading managers and larger teams through operational and system change

Healthcare experience is strongly preferred, particularly within a large, geographically dispersed organization.

Experience with Oracle Fusion Payroll, Oracle HCM, process automation, payroll transformation, and continuous improvement will be especially valuable.

Why This Opportunity Stands Out

This isn't a Director role where you simply oversee payroll processing and escalate system issues to someone else.

Payroll has a meaningful voice in how the function evolves.

You'll be expected to represent payroll in decisions involving Oracle, operations, process design, technology, controls, and future-state improvements.

You'll step into an established payroll organization and an Oracle environment that is already live. The opportunity is to help determine how effectively both operate going forward.

That makes this as much a payroll optimization and transformation opportunity as an operational leadership role.

Compensation & Location

The base salary range is $145,000–$160,000, based on experience and qualifications.

The position is hybrid and based in Brentwood, Tennessee, with regular onsite presence required.

Relocation assistance is available for the right candidate.

Fully remote candidates will not be considered.

Let's Talk About What You've Actually Done

If you've led enterprise payroll at scale and personally owned Oracle Payroll in a post-implementation environment, we'd like to hear about it.

We're particularly interested in the problems you've solved after go-live, the improvements you've made, the complexity of the payroll environments you've managed, and the teams you've led.

Apply to start a confidential conversation about the opportunity.