Payroll Accounting Manager

Job description / Role

Synopsis

The payroll accounting manager is responsible for end-to-end payroll accounting integrity, control, and audit defensibility across the organization. The role ensures accurate payroll processing, clean payroll accounting, robust internal controls (ICFR), disciplined SAP S/4HANA usage, and high-quality cost center reporting in a large-scale manpower-intensive environment.

Reporting to the head of accounting, this role acts as the payroll control owner, ensuring payroll data, postings, reconciliations, and reports meet the same governance, audit, and data hygiene standards as the wider accounting function.

Accountabilities

Payroll operations & accounting integrity

• Own monthly and off-cycle payroll processing, ensuring full validation, variance analysis, approval workflows, and segregation of duties.
• Ensure payroll calculations, postings, and interfaces are accurately recorded in SAP S/4HANA with no reliance on manual workarounds.
• Own payroll-related accounting entries including accruals, provisions, reversals, reclassifications, and true-ups, fully aligned with IFRS and IAS 19.
• Maintain employee-level payroll schedules and reconciliations, with clear audit trails and documented support.
• Ensure payroll costs are accurately allocated to cost centers, departments, operations, and business units, supporting manpower productivity and margin analysis.

Internal controls, governance & audit

• Act as process owner for payroll ICFR / ICOFR controls, including documentation, testing, issue remediation, and continuous improvement.
• Ensure strong controls over cut-off, completeness, accuracy, duplicate prevention, and authorization of payroll transactions.
• Serve as primary point of contact for internal audit, external audit, regulators, and shareholders on payroll matters.
• Coordinate actuarial valuations (end-of-service benefits), critically review outputs, and ensure accurate accounting and disclosure.
• Ensure payroll audit outcomes are clean, evidence-based, and free from repeat findings.

SAP S/4HANA, systems & data hygiene

• Ensure payroll accounting is fully embedded in SAP S/4HANA as the single source of truth, with disciplined system usage.
• Own payroll-related master data governance, including employee cost centers, wage types, GL mappings, and reporting structures.
• Enforce strict data hygiene standards, ensuring payroll data is accurate, complete, consistently coded, and correct from first entry.
• Implement preventive controls and system validations to reduce errors at source rather than correcting them at close.
• Partner with HR, IT, and accounting to ensure clean hire-to-pay integration with no data breaks or manual overrides.

Reporting, cost analysis & management insight

• Prepare and review monthly payroll balance sheet schedules, ensuring timely clearance of reconciling items.
• Deliver payroll cost analysis, trends, and provisions to support budgeting, forecasting, and workforce planning.
• Ensure payroll reporting by department, cost center, and operation is accurate, consistent, and management-ready.
• Oversee preparation and review of ADQ socio-economic, statutory, and management payroll reports.

Process improvement, automation & continuous improvement

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  Drive process standardization, automation, and digitalization across payroll and related billing workflows.
• Establish clear KPIs for payroll accuracy, timeliness, control effectiveness, and productivity.
• Proactively identify control gaps, inefficiencies, or data quality issues and drive root-cause remediation, not workarounds.

Finance master data

• Provide oversight on financial master data (cost centers, GLs, banks, vendors, customers where relevant).
• Review and approve master data changes to ensure data integrity, compliance, and audit defensibility.
• Perform other ad-hoc duties, projects, and system enhancements as required by the head of accounting.

Education & experience

• Bachelors degree in finance, accounting, economics, or related field.
• Professional certification (CA, CPA, ACCA, CFA) preferred.
• 8-15 years of relevant finance experience, with at least 5 years in a supervisory or managerial role.
• Strong knowledge of IFRS, particularly IAS 19, and payroll accounting treatments.
• Solid understanding of UAE labour law, end-of-service benefits, and statutory payroll requirements.
• Hands-on experience with SAP S/4HANA (payroll integration, FI, controlling).
• Advanced Excel skills; Power BI, Power Query, and automation exposure preferred.
• Proven experience operating in audit-intensive, control-driven environments.
• Strong leadership, stakeholder management, and ability to operate independently under tight deadlines.

Additional information

Etihad Airport Services has now rebranded to Velora LLC.

About Etihad Airport Services-Ground

Etihad Airport Services Ground is the sole ground operations handler at Zayed International Airport.

EASG handles a wide variety of ground functions at the capitals international airport, from passenger check-in and boarding to baggage handling and aircraft services.

All operations are centered around its three main prerogatives: safety and security in all its functions, world-class operations for all customer airlines through maximum efficiency, and a world-class customer experience for all visiting and transiting guests.

About the Company

Etihad Airways is the National Airline of the United Arab Emirates. The airline was set up by a Royal Decree in July 2003, with Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE, as its hub. Etihad started commercial operations in November 2003.

With Etihad, everyone who flies with us is welcomed as our guest.

This simple credo illuminates everything we do, from big things like making sure that our fleet is one of the most advanced in the sky, to small touches like letting you choose the films you watch.

Were proud to be the National Airline of the United Arab Emirates. At the crossroads between Europe and Asia, our home reflects our commitment to bringing the world closer together - as does our highly cosmopolitan staff.