Payroll Operations Specialist - Ask Darwin
Darwinbox
Location: Hyderabad
Darwinbox is the fastest-growing HR technology platform, designing the future of work by building the world's best HR tech, driven by a fierce focus on employee experience and customer success, and continuous, iterative innovation. We are the preferred choice of 900+ global enterprises to manage their 2.5 million+ employees across 116+ countries.
Darwinbox's new-age HCM suite competes with local as well as global players in the enterprise technology space (such as SAP, Oracle, and Workday). The firm has acquired notable customers ranging from large conglomerates to unicorn start-ups: DP World, Masafi, DIFC, Abu Dhabi Department of Finance, Nivea, Starbucks, Swiggy, DLF, Crisil, CRED, Vedanta, Mahindra, Glenmark, Gokongwei Group, Mitra Adiperkasa, EFS Facilities Management, VNG Corporation, and many more.
Our vision of building a world-class product company from Asia is backed by marquee global investors like Microsoft, Salesforce, Sequoia Capital, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
About the role:
As a Payroll Operations Specialist, you are the first line of support for our clients on everything payroll. Clients come to you with questions, edge cases, and issues - and they expect clear, confident answers, fast. Your job is to understand the query, troubleshoot it on the spot wherever possible, and drive it to a clean resolution while keeping the client informed at every step.
This is a client-facing role at heart. You will spend your day in conversation - on calls, on chat, and over email - so you should be comfortable holding a discussion with a client, explaining what is happening, and following through until the matter is closed. When an issue turns out to be a product bug rather than a configuration or data question, you become the bridge to our product team: you raise it, chase it, and stay on it until it is fixed.
What you’ll do:
- Own client payroll queries end to end - receive them through Ask Darwin and other support channels, understand the underlying problem, and troubleshooting to resolve them as quickly as possible.
- Bring strong payroll fundamentals to every conversation - understand payroll processing, statutory components, wage codes, and common processing scenarios well enough to diagnose issues without handholding.
- Hold clear, confident client conversations - be comfortable getting on a call or a chat, walking a client through an issue, and setting the right expectations on timelines.
- Document minutes of meeting (MOM) for client discussions and circulate them , so that actions, owners, and timelines are captured and agreed.
- Send timely, proactive status updates to clients - keep them informed on open items rather than waiting to be chased.
- Unlock clients when they are blocked - identify what is holding up their payroll run and clear the path so they can proceed.
- Identify product issues and escalate them to the product team with clear, well-documented context - then follow up persistently and drive the fix to closure.
- Track all open items to resolution, ensuring nothing slips through and every query reaches a defined outcome.
- 1 - 3 years of experience in payroll operations, payroll support, or a closely related finance/HR function .
- Solid, hands-on understanding of payroll - you can reason through a payroll query and know where things typically go wrong.
- A confident communicator who does not hesitate to talk to clients - comfortable on calls, on chatting, and in writing.
- Strong troubleshooting and problem-solving instincts, with the ability to diagnose and resolve issues under time pressure.
- A genuine self-starter - you take ownership, chase issues down, and follow through to closure without being reminded.
- Comfortable documenting clearly - MOMs, status updates, and issue write-ups - and proficiency with Email, MS Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.
- Willingness to learn HRMS/payroll technology systems; prior exposure to an HRMS platform is an added advantage.
- We are looking for people who take ownership, push through until the job is done, communicate clearly, adapt fast, are comfortable in front of clients, and have a bias for closing things out.