Papaya Global is a rapidly growing, award-winning B2B tech unicorn with an ambitious mission to revolutionize the payroll & payments industry. With over $400M raised from multiple tier-one investors, our innovative technology provides a comprehensive solution for managing global workforces, encompassing everything from hiring and onboarding to managing and paying employees in over 160 countries.

You will lead the India-based team that customizes, operates, and validates our new payroll engine. You own the execution, quality gates, and readiness call for each project. You report to the Project Manager in Israel.

Your team sits in one place. Almost nothing else does. Global payroll experts, Engineering, Data, and other stakeholders are spread across countries and time zones, and they all depend on what your team produces. That makes communication a core skill of this role, not a soft add-on: you translate regulatory requirements into calculation rules, surface a variance before it becomes a payroll error, and give one clear answer to people who each see a different part of the problem.

This is a hands-on leadership role. Part of your week goes to reviewing mapping and transformation rules yourself. The rest goes to building a team that can do it without you.

What You'll Own

Execute on a plan. Own the execution for onboarding existing and new customers into the new payroll engine. Follow tight timelines and country rollout sequencing, managing estimates, capacity, dependencies, and the critical path. Escalate risks to the Project Manager before they become missed payroll cycles.
The team. Hire, onboard, and ramp up a team of up to 10 members in India. Conduct 1:1s, set objectives, manage performance, and build the team's expertise in payroll logic and data tooling.
Quality as a system. Own the validation framework, including test datasets, output validation, definition of done, defect triage, and turnaround targets.
Technical review. Review transformation and mapping rules, structured configurations (JSON/XML), and calculation logic. Determine whether mismatches stem from business rules, input data, or system bugs.
Shadow and parallel run. Own the execution of legacy versus new engine shadow runs, align sign-off criteria with global payroll experts, lead variance reviews, and drive each country to clean results.
Cutover readiness. Recommend go/no-go decisions for each rollout wave based on evidence, own the rollback plan, and stand behind the first live payroll cycle in every country.
Communication and reporting. Report status, risks, and decisions to the Project Manager on a regular cadence, with clear owners, timelines, and no surprises.
Cross-country stakeholders. Partner daily with global payroll experts, Engineering, Data, and cross-functional stakeholders across multiple countries.
AI-native delivery. Make AI-assisted analysis, specification drafting, and rule review the team's default way of working while continuously raising the team's AI proficiency.
Handover. Produce runbooks and documentation, and transition the payroll engine to steady-state operations.

Requirements:

5-8+ years in systems implementation, technical delivery, or data and business operations, including at least one large migration or platform rollout.
2+ years of directly managing a team of 5–10 people, including hiring and performance management.
Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to communicate clearly across functions, countries, and seniority levels, drive decisions, and escalate risks proactively.
Computer Science or Engineering degree, or equivalent hands-on technical background.
QA mindset with the ability to define acceptance criteria and own quality gates, not just validate outputs.
Advanced Excel skills: complex formulas, Pivot Tables, VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP, and cleaning and reconciling data across multiple file formats.
2+ years of experience working with Python, with the ability to script validation and reconciliation.
Experience managing a system integrator or implementation partner against an SOW.
Ability to read, understand, and edit structured data formats (JSON/XML), and read SQL.
Experience working with AI tools, with prompt engineering skills applied to regulatory analysis, specification drafting, and rule review.
Fast self-learning ability, comfortable navigating evolving regulations, systems, and data.
Accuracy and attention to detail.

Nice to have:

Knowledge of Odoo software or a comparable payroll engine.
Experience running a parallel or shadow payroll run through to sign-off.

Technical Data Lead/Manager