Principal Payroll Analyst

At MHR, our employees are central to our success and play a key role in helping customers achieve sustainable high performance. With a team of over 900 professionals, we work to make things flow smoothly, whether it's for large organisations or individual employees. As businesses face rapid changes in the world of work, our team is here to help them adapt and thrive. 

By focusing on the core needs of efficiency, productivity, growth, and impact, our employees use their expertise to deliver real solutions through our People and Finance platform. This system, which covers finance, HR, payroll, and learning, helps businesses run more smoothly and make better decisions in real time.

With over 40 years of experience behind us, MHR’s track record as a high-performance organisation is built on clear goals, a shared vision, and strong communication - all of which we pass on to our customers. 

MHR is more than just a place to work; it’s a platform for empowerment. Joining us means bringing innovation, technology, and teamwork seamlessly removes obstacles, enhances your skills, and allow you to focus on what’s most important to you- work that matters.

With us, you’ll grow, find your flow, and make a lasting difference in your career, your team, and your impact. 

Your Career

As a Principal Payroll Analyst, you’ll take ownership of developing and leading sector-specific payroll expertise across the business. You’ll continuously build your knowledge of payroll legislation, regulation, and industry developments; ensuring both you and the wider team remain ahead of change.

You’ll play a key role in strengthening capability across the function, supporting Analysts through knowledge sharing, contributing to the development of payroll knowledge libraries, and acting as a go-to expert for complex or high-risk queries. You’ll also be involved in customer discussions, helping to shape payroll solutions and improvements, while gaining a deeper understanding of varied payroll environments.

Alongside this, you’ll enhance your experience in risk management, governance, and continuous improvement, identifying trends, supporting process optimisation, and contributing to automation and standardisation initiatives.

Your Team

You’ll work at the heart of the Managed Payroll service, partnering closely with Payroll Analysts, Senior Payroll Analysts, the Payroll Manager, Operations, Service Design, and the Academy. Acting as a trusted subject matter expert, you’ll support and guide the wider payroll team, providing technical oversight, handling escalations, and ensuring consistency in payroll delivery. You’ll also collaborate with customers and internal stakeholders, contributing specialist insight to service discussions and improvement initiatives.

Your Impact

Your expertise will directly drive the quality, consistency, and reliability of payroll services. By acting as an escalation point and ensuring payroll controls are correctly applied, you’ll reduce risk and improve service outcomes for customers.

You’ll identify trends in payroll activity, feeding insights back into the business to minimise repeat issues and strengthen processes. Through your involvement in incident management, post-incident reviews, and corrective actions, you’ll help embed a culture of continuous improvement.

You’ll also play a key role in maintaining compliance with quality standards, supporting audit readiness, and ensuring processes align with recognised frameworks such as ISO9001. Ultimately, your work will enhance service quality, improve customer confidence, and support the ongoing evolution of the Managed Payroll service.

Benefits To Support You Personally And Professionally

Alongside the opportunity to work with an incredible team and express your individuality, we offer a range of personalised benefits including:

• Access to over 60 internal training courses, professional qualifications, and cross-departmental mentoring and coaching programs
• 24/7 access to a GP through Help at Hand for you and your family, confidential mental health support, and paid sick leave
• Ability to purchase or sell additional holiday days beyond 25 days and bank holidays

Enhanced Family leave

My MHRewards offering discounts at over 900 retailers

Monthly employee recognition program and departmental awards

Referral bonus scheme of up to £2,000

Employee-led social events such as running clubs, football teams, book clubs, and bake-offs

On-site subsidised restaurants offering a variety of fresh meals daily

Opt-in benefits schemes such as private medical insurance and dental coverage

We value the well-being, financial stability, and inclusivity of our employees, and strive to provide a supportive working environment.

At MHR, we’re completely committed to creating a supportive and inclusive workplace where all voices are heard, and everyone feels valued and supported.

Whatever your background, abilities and experiences, if you’re excited by this role we want to hear from you. If you require assistance for an interview, please let us know and we’ll make sure your needs are met when you arrive.

If we receive an exceptionally high volume of applications, we reserve the right to close this vacancy earlier than originally advertised.