Senior Payroll Manager at Figma - Remote Australia — Columbus
Traveler-Friendly Insight
This role is explicitly remote — but only from Australia. That's a meaningful constraint for digital nomads: you must be legally resident and work-authorized in Australia to hold this position, which effectively limits location flexibility to within Australian borders.
Timezone considerations: As a Senior Manager overseeing APAC and EMEA payroll operations, you'll need to coordinate across a wide spread of timezones — from Singapore (UTC+8) to London (UTC+0/+1) and beyond. Australian timezones (AEST UTC+10, AWST UTC+8) naturally overlap with APAC business hours, but EMEA calls will likely require early mornings. This role is unlikely to be fully async — payroll compliance has hard deadlines and time-sensitive vendor coordination.
Visa considerations: Since the role requires working from Australia, you'd need a valid Australian work visa (e.g., Skilled Independent Visa 189, Employer-Sponsored 482, or existing PR/citizenship). Standard tourist or working holiday visas are generally not appropriate for full-time professional employment.
Lifestyle note: While fully remote within Australia, the seniority and cross-functional nature of this role (audits, compliance deadlines, team management) suggest a structured schedule rather than a fully flexible nomadic lifestyle. In-person onboarding is also required. If you're based in a lower-cost Australian city like Adelaide or Hobart, the remote setup could still yield a strong quality-of-life advantage compared to Sydney or Melbourne.
Figma is growing our team of passionate creatives and builders on a mission to make design accessible to all. Figma's platform helps teams bring ideas to life—whether you're brainstorming, creating a prototype, translating designs into code, or iterating with AI. From idea to product, Figma empowers teams to streamline workflows, move faster, and work together in real time from anywhere in the world. If you're excited to shape the future of design and collaboration, join us!
We're looking for a Senior Manager, Global Payroll Compliance & International Operations to help scale Figma's international payroll operations and compliance programs. In this role, you'll lead payroll operations across APAC and EMEA, ensuring employees are paid accurately, compliantly, and on time. You'll partner closely with Payroll, Finance, People, Accounting, Legal, and external vendors to strengthen operational foundations, improve compliance visibility, and build scalable processes that support Figma's continued global growth.
This role reports to the Director, Payroll Operations.
This is a full-time role that can be held remotely from Australia.
What you'll do at Figma:
- Lead payroll operations across APAC and EMEA, ensuring accurate, compliant, and timely payroll processing across multiple countries
- Partner with global payroll vendors and local providers to resolve operational issues, maintain service quality, and drive continuous improvement
- Manage payroll compliance activities, including maintaining compliance calendars, tracking statutory requirements, and ensuring key deadlines are met
- Monitor regulatory and legislative changes across jurisdictions, assess impacts, and escalate risks and recommendations to leadership
- Support internal and external audits by coordinating documentation, responding to requests, and strengthening audit readiness processes
- Standardize and improve international payroll processes, controls, and reporting to support scalability and operational consistency
- Lead and develop a distributed team, including an employee in EMEA and contractors in the Philippines
- Collaborate with People, HRIS, Accounting, and Legal teams on payroll initiatives, vendor implementations, and operational improvements
We'd love to hear from you if you have:
- 10+ years of experience managing global or multi-country payroll operations
- Expertise in international payroll compliance across APAC and EMEA jurisdictions
- Experience leading distributed teams and partnering with global payroll vendors
- Strong knowledge of payroll controls, audit requirements, and SOX-compliant processes
- Demonstrated ability to manage complex operational priorities and collaborate effectively across cross-functional stakeholders
While it's not required, it's an added plus if you also have:
- Operated in a high-growth technology or SaaS environment
- Supported international expansion or new market entry initiatives
- Managed equity, mobility, or expatriate payroll programs
- Utilized Workday, ADP, and global payroll platforms to support payroll operations
- Led vendor consolidation or global process standardization initiatives
At Figma, one of our values is Grow as you go. We believe in hiring smart, curious people who are excited to learn and develop their skills. If you're excited about this role but your past experience doesn't align perfectly with the points outlined in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.
At Figma we celebrate and support our differences. We know employing a team rich in diverse thoughts, experiences, and opinions allows our employees, our product and our community to flourish. Figma is an equal opportunity workplace — we are dedicated to equal employment opportunities regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity/expression, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements.
We will work to ensure individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to apply for a role, participate in the interview process, perform essential job functions, and receive other benefits and privileges of employment. If you require accommodation, please reach out to [email protected].
Examples of accommodations include but are not limited to:
- Holding interviews in an accessible location
- Enabling closed captioning on video conferencing
- Ensuring all written communication be compatible with screen readers
- Changing the mode or format of interviews
To ensure the integrity of our hiring process and facilitate a more personal connection, we require all candidates keep their cameras on during video interviews. Additionally, if hired you will be required to attend in-person onboarding.
By applying for this job, the candidate acknowledges and agrees that any personal data contained in their application or supporting materials will be processed in accordance with Figma's Candidate Privacy Notice.
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