Senior Managing Consultant - SuccessFactors Payroll (m/w/d)

A career in IBM Consulting is rooted by long-term relationships and close collaboration with clients across the globe.

You'll work with visionaries across multiple industries to improve the hybrid cloud and AI journey for the most innovative and valuable companies in the world. Your ability to accelerate impact and make meaningful change for your clients is enabled by our strategic partner ecosystem and our robust technology platforms across the IBM portfolio; including Software and Red Hat.

Curiosity and a constant quest for knowledge serve as the foundation to success in IBM Consulting. In your role, you'll be encouraged to challenge the norm, investigate ideas outside of your role, and come up with creative solutions resulting in ground breaking impact for a wide network of clients. Our culture of evolution and empathy centers on long-term career growth and development opportunities in an environment that embraces your unique skills and experience.

As a SAP SuccessFactors Consultant you will serve as a client-facing practitioner who sells, leads and implements expert services utilizing the breadth of IBM's offerings and technologies. A successful Consultant is regarded by clients as a trusted business advisor who collaborates to provide innovative solutions used to solve the most challenging business problems.

In this role, you'll work in one of our IBM Consulting Client Innovation Centers (Delivery Centers), where we deliver deep technical and industry expertise to a wide range of public and private sector clients around the world. Our delivery centers offer our clients locally based skills and technical expertise to drive innovation and adoption of new technology.

As consultant for SAP SuccessFactors Payroll you are a senior-level expert responsible for designing, configuring, and delivering payroll solutions using SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll (ECP).

The role ensures payroll operations are accurate, compliant, and aligned to business requirements across multiple geographies, while integrating seamlessly with broader HR and finance systems.

This consultant acts as a trusted advisor to clients and stakeholders on payroll process transformation, compliance, and technology optimization, providing leadership for complex, multi-country implementations.

Your primary responsibilities include:

• Solution Consulting & Design
  1. Lead discovery and requirement-gathering workshops focused on payroll processes, compliance, and operational needs.
  2. Translate business and legislative requirements into functional designs for ECP and related modules as well as, where applicable, the integration of external payroll provider solutions.
  3. Design payroll process flows, calculations, and rules to meet organizational and country-specific needs.
  4. Ensure payroll configuration aligns with SAP best practices and statutory compliance.
  5. Define scope and estimate efforts for the implementation of SuccessFactors ECP and related modules based on client specified requirements.
     
     
• Implementation Leadership
  1. Serve as the functional lead for Payroll workstreams in large-scale SuccessFactors programs.
  2. Manage end-to-end delivery, including requirements capture, system configuration, testing, payroll parallel runs, training, deployment, and go-live support.
  3. Oversee and guide the work of implementation partners and internal configuration teams.
  4. Support change management efforts to ensure smooth adoption of new payroll processes.

• Compliance & Risk Management
  1. Ensure payroll solutions adhere to country-specific legislation, tax regulations, and reporting requirements.
  2. Implement controls, validations, and audit processes within the payroll system.
  3. Advise stakeholders on risk mitigation strategies related to payroll operations.

• Client Engagement & Advisory
  1. Act as the trusted advisor for payroll transformation, process improvement, and technology adoption.
  2. Present solution options, impact analysis, and recommendations to senior business and HR leaders.
  3. Facilitate payroll-specific training sessions and knowledge transfer workshops.

• Integration & Data Considerations
  1. Define and oversee integration design between ECP and other systems such as Employee Central, Time & Attendance, Finance/ERP, and third-party benefits or payroll providers.
  2. Ensure data accuracy and integrity across payroll and HR systems.
  3. Work with middleware tools (e.g., SAP Cloud Platform Integration) to configure secure and reliable data flows.
     
     
• Release & Continuous Improvement
  1. Monitor SAP SuccessFactors release updates relevant to payroll and assess applicability.
  2. Recommend adoption of enhancements to improve efficiency, compliance, or user experience.
  3. Lead post-implementation optimization initiatives.

• Knowledge Sharing & Mentoring
  1. Mentor junior payroll consultants and configuration specialists.
  2. Contribute to internal best practice documentation, tools, and templates.
  3. Support pre-sales activities, including proposals, demonstrations, and scoping exercises.

• 8–10+ years of payroll experience, with at least 5+ years in SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll. Experience in SAP HCM and H4S4 Payroll and Time Management are beneficial.
• Proven track record in multi-country payroll implementations and support.
• Deep understanding of payroll and time management processes, compliance frameworks, and statutory reporting requirements.
• Experience with payroll integrations to time management, HR core systems, and finance applications.
• Experience in multi-country, large-scale implementations.
• Excellent workshop facilitation, communication, and stakeholder management skills.
• Ability to work across business and technical teams to deliver complex solutions.
• Language skills: Fluent in written and spoken English and German

• Strong communication and negotiation skills, as well as mental flexibility
• Strong ability to analyse situations and solve problems
• Willingness to work on-site with our customers