Director, Global Payroll

As the world’s pioneering local delivery platform, our mission is to deliver an amazing experience, fast, easy, and to your door. We operate in over 70+ countries worldwide, powered by tech, designed by people. As one of Europe’s largest tech platforms, headquartered in Berlin, Germany. Delivery Hero has been listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange since 2017 and is part of the MDAX stock market index. We enable creative minds to deliver solutions that create impact within our ecosystem. We move fast, take action and adapt. No matter where you're from or what you believe in, we build, we deliver, we lead. We are Delivery Hero.

Delivery Hero continues to modernise its global People Operations ecosystem across 70+ countries and 11 brands. We are building integrated, compliant, insight-driven payroll, mobility, immigration, relocation, and travel frameworks that remove complexity, reduce fragmentation, and create predictability for our teams and our employees.

We are looking for a Director, Global Payroll, who will continue the multi-year strategy already in motion: building global canonical data models, strengthening controllership, implementing scalable vendor architectures, creating audit-ready processes, and enabling healthier teams who operate with clarity, care, and expertise. This role will drive the next phase of operational maturity while staying close to people, details, execution, and coaching.

The Director leads the transformation, governance, and operational maturity of the Global Payroll domains. The role acts as a domain-owning functional leader who advances a unified, technology-enabled, multi-country operating model. The Director ensures accuracy, compliance, data integrity, and controllership while developing high-performing teams and scaling internal talent. The role blends hands-on technical depth with strategic leadership, ensuring that the long-term transformation vision continues with discipline, structure, and heart.

• Execute and continuously mature the global strategy for Payroll, Mobility, Immigration, and Travel, ensuring stable implementation across the multi-country operating model while applying structured learning, data-driven judgment, and Delivery Hero’s leadership principles to refine execution without redefining the strategic direction.

• Apply and strengthen established governance, compliance, and controllership frameworks, maintaining statutory accuracy, internal-control discipline, evidence traceability, and regulatory readiness across 70+ countries, while identifying improvement opportunities that reinforce — rather than redesign — the existing strategic architecture.

• Oversee vendor, systems, and data architecture performance within the defined strategic boundaries, ensuring SLA/OLA adherence, platform stability, and integration quality; evolving canonical data structures and validation rules to improve reliability, auditability, and operational predictability.

• Drive the execution of transformation and operational improvement plans, delivering migrations, vendor transitions, platform enhancements, and process changes with precision; safeguarding continuity during high-risk periods; and resolving escalations and cross-functional blockers by providing clarity, ownership, and technical depth.

• Develop and elevate teams across operations, technical SMEs, and compliance, creating psychologically safe environments, coaching through errors, strengthening internal talent pipelines, and enabling consistent, customer-centric service delivery that reflects Delivery Hero’s leadership principles.

• Act as the accountable leader for a global sub-function, ensuring alignment to functional priorities, influencing cross-functional decision-making without redefining strategy, simplifying fragmented landscapes, and ensuring that Payroll, Mobility, Immigration, and Travel operate predictably, compliantly, and in full fidelity to the approved global plan.

Technical Skills

• Deep expertise in multi-country payroll operations, statutory compliance, and global mobility frameworks.

• Strong understanding of HRIS, ERP, payroll engines, vendor ecosystems, data architecture, and audit requirements.

• Ability to design validations, data schemas, canonical models, and ingestion rules.

• Literacy in transformation frameworks, operating model design, and governance structures.

• Capacity to interpret complex regulatory requirements and convert them into system rules, controls, and documentation.

Leadership & Behavioral Skills

• Demonstrated ability to lead transformation within a defined domain while maintaining operational stability.

• Strong coaching, mentoring, and talent-development orientation.

• Commitment to building internal capability and promoting from within.

• High emotional intelligence, psychological safety leadership, and people-first mindset.

• Clear communication style suited for senior stakeholders and technical teams.

• Ability to navigate ambiguity and provide clarity without micromanaging.

• High ownership, resilience, and long-term thinking.

Analytical & Problem-Solving Skills

• Strong analytical thinking, pattern recognition, scenario modelling, and KPI design.

• Ability to challenge the data and interrogate assumptions when anecdotes diverge from metrics.

• Experience defining, monitoring, and reporting operational dashboards, vendor scorecards, and control maturity assessments.

Transformation & Change Skills

• Ability to drive change in environments with legacy processes, high fragmentation, or inconsistent vendor maturity.

• Experience leading multi-country transformation programs with clear milestones, communication plans, and risk controls.

Ensuring you and all our Heroes are looked after, happy, and healthy is always on the menu. Because if you’re in good shape, then we’re in good shape.

• Make the most of our hybrid working model and join the team for face-to-face connection and collaboration in our beautiful Berlin campus 2 days a week

• We offer 27 days holiday with an extra day on 2nd and 3rd year of service

• We will support you in developing yourself and your career growth opportunities: 1.000 € Educational Budget, Language Courses, Parental Support and access to the Udemy Business platform to explore a variety of online courses.

• Get moving and release those wonderful, mind-boosting endorphins: Health Checkups, Meditation, Gym & Bicycle Subsidy

• Cash. Dough. Cheddar. Whatever you call it, we’ll help you with it: Employee Share Purchase Plan, Sabbatical Bank,  Public Transportation Ticket Discount, Life & Accident Insurance, Corporate Pension Plan

• The power of getting together over some food is unrivaled. Here are a few ways to help you do that. All the yum: Digital Meal Vouchers, Food Vouchers, Corporate Discounts. Courses.

• Wondering what relocating to Berlin is like? In this article, we’ve put together 10 things you should know about moving to Berlin  and how Delivery Hero can support you. You can also visit our relocation hub and check out more information about moving to Berlin.

• Ready to prepare for your interview? Check out the list of the 5 most common interview questions and answers created in collaboration with our recruiters.

Ready to join our team? If you’re excited to grow, collaborate and be part of the world’s leading delivery platform, we’d love to hear from you. Apply today!

 

 

We believe diversity and inclusion are key to creating not only an exciting product, but also an amazing customer and employee experience. Fostering this starts with hiring - therefore we do not discriminate on the basis of racial identities, religious beliefs, color, national origin, gender identities or expressions, sexual orientations, age, marital or disability statuses, or any other aspect that makes you, you.

We encourage you to let us know if you need any accommodations or specific accessibility support to ensure a smooth interview experience—just let us know with an email to our Inclusion Officer at [email protected] it in your application.

Severely disabled applicants with equal qualifications will be given preferential consideration.

You're welcome to share your pronouns (he/she/they) right from the start so we can address you respectfully from our first contact.