Workday Payroll & Accounting Specialist

Pay Range: The anticipated base salary range for this position is $95,000 to $105,000, depending on qualifications, experience, and other job-related factors. The position is also eligible for a discretionary annual incentive with a target of 10% of base salary, subject to applicable organizational and individual performance considerations.

The American Arbitration Association (AAA) is seeking an experienced Workday Payroll & Accounting Specialist to join our team at our headquarters in downtown Manhattan. This role is ideal for a payroll professional who combines strong hands-on Workday Payroll expertise with a solid understanding of payroll operations, accounting, reconciliations, and financial controls. You will serve as a key functional resource for our Workday Payroll environment and partner closely with Payroll, Finance, Human Resources, Benefits, and IT to help ensure our payroll processes are accurate, efficient, well-controlled, and continuously improving.

What You’ll Do

• Serve as a functional administrator and subject matter expert for Workday Payroll, supporting configuration, administration, troubleshooting, testing, reporting, and optimization.
• Configure and maintain Workday Payroll components, including earnings, deductions, payroll calculations, tax elections, withholding rules, costing allocations, and related business processes.
• Maintain payroll accounting and costing configuration, including appropriate mapping to general ledger accounts, cost centers, and other financial dimensions.
• Develop and maintain Workday payroll reports, calculated fields, dashboards, audit reports, and controls.
• Troubleshoot complex Workday Payroll issues, identify root causes, and implement configuration or process solutions.
• Support Workday releases, system enhancements, integrations, regression testing, and implementation of new functionality.
• Partner with HR, Benefits, Finance, IT, and external vendors on integrations involving banking, taxes, benefits, timekeeping, and financial systems.
• Identify opportunities to automate payroll processes, strengthen controls, improve data quality, and reduce manual activity.
• Support accurate and timely regular and off-cycle payroll processing, including bonuses, adjustments, deductions, garnishments, retroactive payments, and other payroll transactions.
• Assist with quarterly and year-end payroll activities, including tax reconciliations and W-2 processing.
• Prepare and review payroll journal entries, reconciliations, accruals, and other payroll-related month-end accounting activities.
• Support internal and external audits and help maintain effective payroll accounting and reconciliation controls.

What We’re Looking For

• Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Human Resources, Information Systems, Business, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• 5–7+ years of payroll experience, including significant hands-on experience with Workday Payroll.
• Strong knowledge of Workday Payroll configuration, business processes, reporting, calculated fields, testing, and troubleshooting.
• Experience with payroll costing and accounting configuration.
• Working knowledge of payroll accounting, including journal entries, general ledger reconciliations, accruals, and month-end close.
• Understanding of federal, state, and local payroll requirements.
• Strong Excel and data-analysis skills.
• Experience participating in Workday implementations, enhancements, or optimization initiatives preferred.
• Workday certification, Certified Payroll Professional (CPP), and/or CPA designation is a plus.

What Will Make You Successful

You are detail-oriented, analytical, technically strong, and comfortable taking ownership of complex payroll issues. You understand that payroll requires precision, sound judgment, and discretion, and you enjoy working collaboratively across functions to solve problems and improve processes. You are also someone colleagues can rely on when there is a challenging Workday Payroll configuration, reporting, reconciliation, or process issue that needs to be understood and resolved.

Hybrid Work Arrangement

This position is based at the AAA’s headquarters in downtown Manhattan and follows a hybrid work arrangement, with employees generally expected to work in the office two days per week. The specific schedule may vary based on business and team needs.