Director of Payroll
Anthropic · San Francisco, United States +1 · 6mo ago
About Anthropic
Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.
About the role
You'll own US and Canada payroll operations end-to-end — hands-on in Workday, close to the details — while also managing and developing 1–2 direct reports on the US team. You'll report directly to the Head of Global Payroll and be a key leader in making sure North American payroll keeps pace with Anthropic's growth.
Strategic importance: You'll be a key contributor to our compliance initiative — our framework for managing payroll tax obligations across US & Canada. You'll also be part of the team driving AI adoption within payroll: we're actively building out how AI tools can improve reconciliation accuracy, error detection, and reporting workflows. This isn't a future initiative — it's happening now.
Responsibilities
US Payroll Operations
- Own full-cycle payroll processing for all US entities — multi-state, multi-frequency, exempt and non-exempt populations
- Process complex equity compensation including RSUs, ISOs, and NSOs, ensuring accurate tax withholding and timely reporting
- Manage high-volume payments: bonuses, commissions, severance, and equity events
- Oversee quarter-end, W-2 preparation, year-end reconciliations, and resolution of federal and state tax notices
- Maintain and continuously improve Workday payroll configuration — identify automation opportunities and lead optimization initiatives
Canada Payroll Management
- Oversee Canada payroll operations in partnership with our PwC Global Payroll Platform, developing expertise in CRA compliance, T4s, Records of Employment, and multi-province processing
- Partner with our international payroll team to ensure Canada stays integrated into our global compliance posture
- Build out Canada payroll SOPs as the function matures
Team Leadership & Development
- Manage and develop 1–2 direct reports on the US payroll team — set clear expectations, provide regular feedback, and invest in their growth
- Build a team culture of accuracy, accountability, and continuous improvement
- Serve as the escalation point for complex payroll issues and employee inquiries
Cross-Functional Partnership & Compliance
- Partner with Corporate Accounting on payroll journal entries, accruals, and month-end close
- Work closely with Tax, Benefits, People Systems, and Employment Legal to ensure data integrity and compliance
- Support audit readiness and internal & systems controls
AI Adoption & Process Improvement
- Champion the use of AI tools within the payroll function — identify high-value use cases for reconciliation, anomaly detection, and reporting
- Lead or support process improvement projects that reduce manual effort, increase accuracy, and improve the employee payroll experience
- Document processes, build SOPs, and contribute to the team's knowledge infrastructure
You may be a good fit if you have
- 8+ years of payroll experience, with at least 3 years in a senior or manager-level role owning US multi-state payroll end-to-end
- Hold a CPP (Certified Payroll Professional) certification
- Direct people management experience — you've managed at least one FTE directly, not just contractors or mentorship relationships
- Strong Workday experience — payroll module preferred; HCM with direct payroll involvement and a clear path to Workday Payroll ownership is considered
- Deep familiarity with equity compensation processing (RSUs, ISOs, NSOs) and the tax implications at both federal and state levels
- Demonstrated ability to thrive in fast-moving, ambiguous environments — you build structure where none exists and don't wait for someone to hand you a playbook
- Strong cross-functional instincts — you know how to build trust quickly, influence without authority, and communicate clearly across Finance, HR, Legal, and beyond
Strong candidates may also have
- Canada payroll experience — even introductory exposure is valued; willingness to learn and grow into the function matters more than deep expertise on day one
- Experimented with AI or automation tools to improve payroll workflows (reconciliation, error detection, reporting)
- Been part of a Workday payroll implementation or major system migration
- Worked at a company that scaled rapidly — from 500 to 2,000+ employees — and built payroll infrastructure to match
- Experience in or exposure to IPO readiness, SOX compliance, or building financial controls from scratch
The annual compensation range for this role is listed below.
For sales roles, the range provided is the role’s On Target Earnings ("OTE") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonuses target and annual base salary for the role.
Logistics
Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience
Required field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience
Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position
Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.
Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.
We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates will meet every single qualification as listed. Research shows that people who identify as being from underrepresented groups are more prone to experiencing imposter syndrome and doubting the strength of their candidacy, so we urge you not to exclude yourself prematurely and to submit an application if you're interested in this work. We think AI systems like the ones we're building have enormous social and ethical implications. We think this makes representation even more important, and we strive to include a range of diverse perspectives on our team.
Your safety matters to us. To protect yourself from potential scams, remember that Anthropic recruiters only contact you from @anthropic.com email addresses. In some cases, we may partner with vetted recruiting agencies who will identify themselves as working on behalf of Anthropic. Be cautious of emails from other domains. Legitimate Anthropic recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before your first day. If you're ever unsure about a communication, don't click any links—visit anthropic.com/careers directly for confirmed position openings.
How we're different
We believe that the highest-impact AI research will be big science. At Anthropic we work as a single cohesive team on just a few large-scale research efforts. And we value impact — advancing our long-term goals of steerable, trustworthy AI — rather than work on smaller and more specific puzzles. We view AI research as an empirical science, which has as much in common with physics and biology as with traditional efforts in computer science. We're an extremely collaborative group, and we host frequent research discussions to ensure that we are pursuing the highest-impact work at any given time. As such, we greatly value communication skills.
The easiest way to understand our research directions is to read our recent research. This research continues many of the directions our team worked on prior to Anthropic, including: GPT-3, Circuit-Based Interpretability, Multimodal Neurons, Scaling Laws, AI & Compute, Concrete Problems in AI Safety, and Learning from Human Preferences.
Come work with us!
Anthropic is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco. We offer competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and a lovely office space in which to collaborate with colleagues. Guidance on Candidates' AI Usage: Learn about our policy for using AI in our application process.