Payroll Risk & Compliance Expert - Africa

About Remote

Remote is solving modern organizations’ biggest challenge – navigating global employment compliantly with ease. We make it possible for businesses of all sizes to recruit, pay, and manage international teams. With our core values at heart and future focused work culture, our team works tirelessly on ambitious problems, asynchronously, around the world. You can find Remoters working from 6 different continents (Antarctica left to go!) and all of our positions are fully remote.

With Innovation as one of the core values, we have built Automation and AI capabilities into the requirements for every role.

We encourage every member of the Remote team to bring their talents, experiences and culture to the table to help us build the best-in-class HR platform.

If you are energetic, curious, motivated and ambitious, be part of our world. Apply now and define the future of work!

What this job can offer you

As a GP Compliance Expert, you are the owner of payroll compliance for your country or region. You hold deep expertise in local legislation and apply it across everything from audits to product design. You’ll translate complex rules into scalable processes, systems, and documentation — ensuring Remote continuously meets (and anticipates) regulatory standards.

You will work closely with Product, Engineering, Design, Operations, and Legal to embed compliance into the foundations of our global payroll platform. You’ll lead investigations and incident resolution, drive continuous improvement, and mentor teams to raise compliance capability across the organisation.

This role blends subject-matter expertise with strategic systems thinking — making you a key architect in how Remote builds compliant, automated global payroll at scale.

What you bring

• Deep expertise in payroll, employment compliance for your country/region — and a strong understanding of how legislation translates into payroll calculations and system logic.
• Proven record leading audits, regulatory reviews, or country-level compliance programs.
• Experience partnering with technical teams to convert statutory rules into product requirements.
• Strong communicator capable of influencing stakeholders across Product, Engineering, Legal, Support, and Senior Leadership.
• Confident investigator with sound judgment in high-risk or sensitive scenarios.
• Mentor and coach who grows the capability of the team around you.
• Systems thinker who designs frameworks, documentation, processes, and controls that scale.
• Comfortable operating in an async, fast-changing, fully remote environment.

Key Responsibilities

Own compliance for your country or region

• Be the accountable expert for payroll compliance in your jurisdiction(s).
• Ensure local requirements are correctly interpreted, documented, and implemented across processes, systems, and customer workflows.

Embed legislation into Remote’s product

• Translate statutory rules, payroll logic, tax calculations, thresholds, and edge cases into structured requirements for Product and Engineering.
• Partner with Product Design to create user experiences that are compliant, intuitive, and auditable.
• Review specifications, test logic, and validate product outputs to ensure legislative accuracy.

Lead complex audits and compliance programs

• Own and deliver multi-country or high-risk audits from planning through remediation.
• Establish audit frameworks that scale across new and existing jurisdictions.
• Identify root causes and drive systemic improvements.

Lead investigations and incident resolution

• Serve as the primary escalation point for compliance issues in your region, supporting Incident Managers to resolve incidents swiftly and effectively.
• Partner cross-functionally to resolve incidents quickly and implement permanent corrective and preventative actions.

Design and implement processes and governance frameworks

• Create clear, scalable, and documented processes for payroll compliance operations.
• Develop controls, SOPs, and monitoring mechanisms to ensure ongoing adherence.
• Align global policies with regional requirements and drive consistency across markets.

Enablement, documentation, and knowledge sharing

• Build training materials, guidance, and rules documentation to upskill internal teams.
• Deliver quarterly enablement, lead learning sessions, and coach Specialists and Leads.
• Maintain high-quality documentation for compliance rules, workflows, and system logic.

Cross-functional influence & stakeholder partnership

• Partner with Product, Engineering, Legal, Support, and Customer Success to ensure compliance is embedded into decision-making.
• Achieve ≥90% stakeholder satisfaction by being responsive, proactive, and solutions-oriented.
• Support go-to-market, customer escalations and expansion initiatives with clear compliance guidance.

Practicals

• You'll report to: Manager, Payroll Strategy and Compliance
• Team: Payroll Strategy and Compliance
• Location: For this position we welcome everyone to apply, but we will prioritize applications from the following locations as we encourage our teams to diversify; Africa
• Start date: As soon as possible

Application process

1. Interview with recruiter
2. Technical Assessment
3. Interview with future manager
4. Interview with Director
5. Bar Raiser Interview
6. Prior employment verification check

 

Remote's Total Rewards philosophy is to ensure fair, unbiased compensation and fair equity pay along with competitive benefits in all locations in which we operate. We do not agree to or encourage cheap-labor practices and therefore we ensure to pay above in-location rates. We hope to inspire other companies to support global talent-hiring and bring local wealth to developing countries.

At first glance our salary bands seem quite wide - here is some context. At Remote we have international operations and a globally distributed workforce.  We use geo ranges to consider geographic pay differentials as part of our global compensation strategy to remain competitive in various markets while we hiring globally.

Our salary ranges are determined by role, level and location, and our job titles may span more than one career level. The actual base pay for the successful candidate in this role is dependent upon many factors such as location, transferable or job-related skills, work experience, relevant training, business needs, and market demands. The base salary range may be subject to change.

At Remote, we foster internal mobility as a key element of our culture of employee growth and development, supported by a compensation philosophy that guarantees pay equity and fairness. Therefore, all compensation changes associated with an internal move will be reviewed by the Total Rewards & People Enablement team on a case by case basis.

The annual salary range for this full-time position is

$62,400—$140,400 USD

Benefits

Our full benefits & perks are explained in our handbook at remote.com/r/benefits. As a global company, each country works differently, but some benefits/perks are for all Remoters:

• work from anywhere
• flexible paid time off
• flexible working hours (we are async)
• 16 weeks paid parental leave
• mental health support services
• stock options
• learning budget
• home office budget & IT equipment
• budget for local in-person social events or co-working spaces

How you’ll plan your day (and life)

We work async at Remote which means you can plan your schedule around your life (and not around meetings). Read more at remote.com/async.

You will be empowered to take ownership and be proactive. When in doubt you will default to action instead of waiting. Your life-work balance is important and you will be encouraged to put yourself and your family first, and fit work around your needs.

If that sounds like something you want, apply now!

How to apply

1. Please fill out the form below and upload your CV with a PDF format.
2. We kindly ask you to submit your application and CV in English, as this is the standardised language we use here at Remote.
3. If you don’t have an up to date CV but you are still interested in talking to us, please feel free to add a copy of your LinkedIn profile instead.

Not only do we encourage folks from all ethnic groups, genders, sexuality, age, abilities, disability status and any other under-represented group to apply, but we prioritize a sense of belonging. We have 4 ERGs (Women, Disability, Queer, Minorities in Tech) who meet regularly with the People team. During your interviews and beyond, we ask & encourage anybody who needs an accommodation to request one from their recruiter.

We will ask you to voluntarily tell us your pronouns at interview stage, and you will have the option to answer our anonymous demographic questionnaire when you apply below. As an equal employment opportunity employer it’s important to us that our workforce reflects people of all backgrounds, identities, and experiences and this data will help us to stay accountable. We thank you for providing this data, if you chose to.

At Remote, we embrace AI as a valuable tool while prioritizing human creativity and authenticity. We look forward to meeting candidates who balance innovation with genuine expertise and experience. To learn more about Remote's AI guidelines check see here. 

Please note we accept applications on an ongoing basis.