Senior Vendor Relationship Manager (Payroll and Compliance)

The role

You will own and evolve Oyster's global network of external payroll partners and core compliance providers. The role focuses on multi-country payroll delivery, vendor accuracy, and regulatory monitoring. You will also provide secondary oversight for specialized compliance vendors.

What you will do

• Act as the primary operational and commercial owner for strategic multi-country payroll partners.
• Maintain mastery of end-to-end payroll delivery workflows and statutory filings.
• Monitor partner SLA compliance and payroll cut-off adherence.
• Define partner strategy, governance, scorecards, and review cadences.
• Hold partners accountable for payroll accuracy, timeliness, and statutory compliance.
• Manage the full vendor relationship lifecycle from selection to exit.
• Lead recurring executive business reviews with partner leadership.
• Conduct vendor compliance audits and risk assessments.
• Lead commercial negotiations, contract renewals, and pricing.
• Manage complex multi-market payroll escalations.

Required qualifications

• 5+ years of direct experience managing multi-country Payroll Vendors and Compliance/Health & Safety partners in a global environment
• Strong technical understanding of end-to-end payroll processing cycles, Gross-to-Net (GTN) calculations, statutory filings, and payroll controls
• Significant experience owning strategic payroll and compliance vendor relationships in a global or multi-country environment
• Deep understanding of payroll operations, compliance tracking, risk assessments, statutory controls, regulatory monitoring, and global legal standards
• Evidence of improving vendor performance through KPIs, SLAs, audits, and reviews
• Commercial negotiation and contract-management capability
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Exceptional relationship-building and influencing skills
• Strong ownership mindset to operate autonomously
• Experience managing complex escalations
• Excellent communication and presentation skills
• Fluent English language

Nice to have

• Experience working with global vendors across multiple regions (APAC, EMEA, LATAM, AMER)
• Experience building or scaling vendor governance programs and operational frameworks
• Additional languages
• Have worked in a fast-paced, scaling startup or global tech environment
• Experience implementing AI tools or automation workflows

Benefits

• Work from anywhere
• 40 days off per year including holidays and vacation, or more if required by country
• Mental health support via Plumm
• Monthly wellbeing allowance via ThanksBen wallet
• Flexible parental leave with at least three months paid leave
• WFH stipend for laptop and home office equipment

About the company

Oyster is a global employment platform that lets companies hire, pay, and care for people anywhere. The company is distributed across 60+ countries and is a B Corp-certified organization.