Senior Engineering Manager, Payroll

Personio's intelligent HR platform helps small and medium-sized organizations unlock the power of people by making complicated, time-consuming tasks simple and efficient. Our growing team of 1,800+ Personios across Europe and the US are building user-friendly products that delight our 14,000+ customers and their 1.5 million employees. Ready to make an impact from day one?
Senior Engineering Manager - Payroll (Munich) d/f/m
About Personio
At Personio, we're on a mission to transform HR technology, making it seamless and scalable for businesses across Europe. As one of the fastest-growing tech companies, we're building an all-in-one HR platform that empowers organizations to put their people first.
The Role: Engineering Manager - Payroll
We're looking for a technically proficient Senior Engineering Manager (EM) for our Payroll team, based in Munich. This team is responsible for building and maintaining payroll solutions that help businesses streamline payroll processing, ensure compliance, and enhance the employee experience. As an EM, you'll lead a growing team (target size of 7) and play a pivotal role in building scalable, high-impact solutions for our customers.
About the Payroll Team
The Payroll team is part of the Personio Payroll unit, dedicated to enabling businesses to manage payroll processes seamlessly, ensuring compliance with local regulations, and improving efficiency. Our team provides the core payroll engine, integrating automation and intelligence to deliver a best-in-class payroll experience.
Being part of the Personio Payroll unit, the team drives both vertical product development (end-to-end) as well as horizontal platform capabilities such as data processing and compliance frameworks.
This year, the team is tackling two major challenges:

• Intelligent Payroll Processing: Automating payroll calculations based on real-time employee data, ensuring accuracy and reducing HR admin workload. This effort is central to making Personio "the intelligent payroll system."
• Scalability for Large Enterprises: Enhancing payroll processing to support large organizations with complex payroll structures and compliance requirements across multiple countries. This initiative involves deep collaboration across multiple partner teams.

What You'll Do:

• Define & Execute Strategy - Drive the technical vision for the Payroll team, ensuring alignment with Personio's product and business objectives.
• Team Growth & Leadership - Recruit, mentor, and lead a high-performing engineering team, fostering a culture of innovation and collaboration.
• Technical Excellence - Guide the team in designing and developing scalable payroll systems within the JVM stack, ensuring reliability, security, and efficiency.
• Cross-Team Collaboration - Partner closely with product managers, staff engineers, and other stakeholders to align initiatives and solve complex technical challenges.
• Stakeholder Management - Navigate dependencies across different teams and ensure seamless integration of payroll services.
• Project Delivery - Oversee planning, execution, and delivery of critical payroll projects, ensuring high-quality output and timely releases.

What We're Looking For:

• 5+ years of engineering management experience, preferably leading backend teams.
• Past expertise in Java/Kotlin (JVM stack) and AWS.
• Experience working with Kafka and event-driven architectures is highly desirable.
• A hands-on leader who can provide technical guidance while empowering team members.
• Strong stakeholder management skills, with the ability to align cross-functional teams.
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced, high-growth environment.

Why Join Personio?

• Competitive compensation package including salary, benefits, and pre-IPO equity.
• 28 days of paid vacation (+ extra days after 2 and 4 years).
• 2 fully paid Impact Days per year for social initiatives.
• Generous parental leave, mental health support, and sabbatical opportunities.
• Flexible hybrid work model (50% remote, 50% in-office).
• Engaging team culture with regular events and company-wide initiatives.

Interview Process:

• HR Call with Stephen to assess team fit (30 mins)
• Hiring Manager screen with Engineering Leader (45 min)
• Project Retro Interview (evaluate problem-solving and leadership skills) (60 mins)
• Technical Case Interview (revised EM-specific assessment) (60 mins)
• Culture Interview with cross-functional team members (30 mins)
• Department Interview with department lead (30 mins)

Ready to make an impact? Join us in shaping the future of HR tech!