Senior Payroll Governance Analyst

Senior Analyst, Payroll Governance

Our Purpose

Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we’re helping build a sustainable economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential.

Title and Summary

Senior Analyst, Payroll GovernanceOverview
We are seeking a highly experienced Senior Payroll Analyst to join our Payroll Governance team. This individual contributor role is responsible for defining, executing, and monitoring global payroll controls, ensuring compliance with SOX and internal governance standards, and maintaining audit readiness across a multinational payroll environment.
The ideal candidate brings deep expertise in payroll controls, audit support, and data governance, with the ability to partner across multiple teams to strengthen the global control environment and mitigate payroll risk.

Role
1. Payroll Controls Design & Governance
• Define, document, and maintain global operational and SOX payroll controls.
• Identify and design additional controls as needed to address emerging risks, regulatory changes, or audit findings.
• Ensure payroll control frameworks align with internal governance standards and SOX requirements.
• Partner with regional payroll leads to ensure controls are clearly understood, implemented consistently, and scalable globally.
2. Global Controls Execution & Monitoring
• Ensure payroll controls are executed consistently across all regions, including appropriate evidence collection and retention.
• Perform periodic control testing to assess design effectiveness and operating effectiveness.
• Monitor control execution status and follow up on missing or incomplete control evidence.
• Support remediation of control gaps, execution failures, or documentation deficiencies.
3. Audit Support & Risk Management
• Determine payroll audit readiness across regions by assessing control execution, documentation quality, and issue remediation status.
• Serve as a key liaison for internal and external payroll audits, partnering with regional payroll leads to coordinate responses.
• Liaise closely with the SOX team to support control testing, walkthroughs, and remediation activities.
• Prepare and review audit documentation, evidence packages, and responses to audit inquiries.
• Track audit findings, management responses, and remediation actions through closure.
4. User Access Reviews & Security Controls
• Perform User Access Reviews (UARs) for payroll systems to ensure appropriate segregation of duties and access controls.
• Manage the Logical Access Management (LMA) process, including access provisioning reviews, removals, and periodic recertifications.
• Partner with IT, Security, and Payroll teams to remediate access related risks and audit findings.

All About You
• Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Business Administration, or a related field.
• 3–5+ years of experience in payroll compliance, SOX controls, audit, or payroll governance within a multinational environment.
• Strong understanding of global payroll processes, internal controls, and regulatory requirements.
• Demonstrated experience defining, executing, and testing SOX and operational controls.
• Experience supporting internal and external audits, including audit readiness and remediation tracking.
• Advanced Excel skills and strong documentation capabilities.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to partner effectively across regions and functions.
• Highly organized, detail oriented, and able to manage multiple compliance deliverables concurrently.

Corporate Security Responsibility

All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks comes with an inherent risk to the organization and, therefore, it is expected that every person working for, or on behalf of, Mastercard is responsible for information security and must:

• Abide by Mastercard’s security policies and practices;

• Ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information being accessed;

• Report any suspected information security violation or breach, and

• Complete all periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard’s guidelines.

Experience Level

Senior Level