Job Title: Payroll Team Manager

Location: Preston; Lancashire. We offer a range of hybrid and flexible working arrangements – please speak to your recruiter about the options for this particular role

Salary: £48,000 – £52,000 depending on experience

What you’ll be doing:

• Take ownership of team KPIs and performance measures, ensuring payrolls are delivered accurately and on time, while enhancing service quality and driving performance improvements
• Provide effective and supportive line management to Payroll Advisors and Administrators, coaching and developing them to achieve their full potential while maintaining a motivated and high-performing team
• Oversee end-to-end payroll quality, ensuring accuracy at every stage of the process and full compliance with statutory, regulatory and company policy requirements
• Act as a subject matter expert for complex payroll queries, supporting escalations and ensuring timely resolution in line with agreed service levels
• Champion continuous improvement by fostering a culture of innovation and process enhancement, ensuring the team feels engaged, supported and confident in embracing change
• Partner with HR, Finance, and wider business stakeholders to support organisational changes, projects, and process enhancements.
• Support audits and compliance reviews by embedding robust controls, maintaining high quality standards and promoting operational excellence across the team

Your skills and experiences:

Essential:

• Extensive operational payroll experience, ideally gained within a Shared Service environment
• Demonstrable experience of managing and developing people, ideally leading a large team
• Comprehensive knowledge of current payroll legislation, with awareness of forthcoming regulatory changes and their practical impact
• Familiarity with ResourceLink or a comparable payroll and HR system
• Experience of working within a complex, high-volume and fast-paced payroll environment, with the ability to adapt to change

Desirable:

• CIPP qualification, or working towards accreditation, would be advantageous

Benefits:

As well as a competitive pension scheme, BAE Systems also offers employee share plans, an extensive range of flexible discounted health, wellbeing and lifestyle benefits, including a green car scheme, private health plans and shopping discounts – you may also be eligible for an annual incentive.

The Payroll Team:

You’ll join a large, collaborative UK Payroll team supporting all sectors across BAE Systems. Operating within a complex and fast-moving environment, the team manages a diverse range of activity, detailed processes and multiple stakeholders, ensuring no two days are the same.

This is an excellent opportunity to influence meaningful change and help shape the future of payroll delivery across the organisation. You’ll play an integral role in ensuring accurate and compliant payrolls, while driving continuous improvement and creating an environment in which your team can thrive.

If you enjoy working in a dynamic setting and are motivated by solving complex challenges, this role offers genuine variety, responsibility and the opportunity to make a tangible impact.

Why BAE Systems?

This is a place where you’ll be able to make a real difference. You’ll be part of an inclusive culture that values diversity of thought, rewards integrity, and merit, and where you’ll be empowered to fulfil your potential. We welcome people from all backgrounds and want to make sure that our recruitment processes are as inclusive as possible. If you have a disability or health condition (for example dyslexia, autism, an anxiety disorder etc.) that may affect your performance in certain assessment types, please speak to your recruiter about potential reasonable adjustments.

Please be aware that many roles at BAE Systems are subject to both security and export control restrictions. These restrictions mean that factors such as your nationality, any nationalities you may have previously held, and your place of birth can restrict the roles you are eligible to perform within the organisation. All applicants must as a minimum achieve Baseline Personnel Security Standard. Many roles also require higher levels of National Security Vetting where applicants must typically have 5 to 10 years of continuous residency in the UK depending on the vetting level required for the role, to allow for meaningful security vetting checks.

Closing Date: 20th March 2026

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive sufficient applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible.

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