Senior Payroll Specialist
Tranent, GB, EH33 2NE
At Charles River, we are passionate about improving the quality of people’s lives. When you join our global family, you will help create healthier lives for millions of patients and their families.
Charles River employees are innovative thinkers, who are dedicated to continuous learning and improvement. We will empower you with the resources you need to grow and develop in your career.
As a Charles River employee, you will be part of an industry-leading, customer-focused company at the forefront of drug development. Your skills will play a key role in bringing life-saving therapies to market faster through simpler, quicker, and more digitalized processes. Whether you are in lab operations, finance, IT, sales, or another area, when you work at Charles River, you will be the difference every day for patients across the globe.
Job Summary
Our Payroll Team currently has a fantastic opportunity to join them as a Senior Payroll Specialist as part of the wider Finance Shared Service function based at Riccarton, Edinburgh. This is a Fixed Term Contract Opportunity with a current end date of 30 June 2026.
Although the team’s office base is Edinburgh, the Payroll Team predominately work from home.
Our Payroll Department is a managed processing service supporting various Charles River companies throughout Europe.
The principal duties of the Senior Payroll Specialist are:
• Preparation of payrolls for Charles River Laboratories in line with pre-determined reporting dates
• Maintenance of salary records in line with statutory and company specific requirements
• Ensure audit requirements are maintained
• Regular communication with employees and key stakeholders
• Support continuous improvement projects
• Maintain processing manuals and knowledge base documentation
• Complete adhoc payroll related requests and submissions
• General administration tasks
Job Qualifications
The following are minimum requirements related to the Senior Payroll Specialist position:
• Experience of working in a multi-national organisation with regional or global payroll departments
• IT proficient – particularly confident in excel and PowerBI
• Understanding of audit controls
• Continuous improvement mindset
• Ability to work within a fast paced, deadline driven and evolving environment
• Good stakeholder management
The following would be beneficial but not essential:
• Experience operating ADP Global View and ADP Celergo
• Proven track record operating within an outsourced payroll model
• Experience of operating within a centralised payroll function supporting EMEA
• Language skills, in particular Dutch or French
Job Qualifications
About Corporate Functions
The Corporate Functions provide operational support across Charles River in areas such as Human Resources, Finance, IT, Legal, Sales, Quality Assurance, Marketing, and Corporate Development. They partner with their colleagues across the company to develop and drive strategies and to set global standards. The functions are essential to providing a bridge between strategic vision and operational readiness, to ensure ongoing functional innovation and capability improvement.
About Charles River
Charles River is an early-stage contract research organization (CRO). We have built upon our foundation of laboratory animal medicine and science to develop a diverse portfolio of discovery and safety assessment services, both Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) and non-GLP, to support clients from target identification through preclinical development. Charles River also provides a suite of products and services to support our clients’ clinical laboratory testing needs and manufacturing activities. Utilizing this broad portfolio of products and services enables our clients to create a more flexible drug development model, which reduces their costs, enhances their productivity and effectiveness to increase speed to market.
With over 20,000 employees within 110 facilities in 20 countries around the globe, we are strategically positioned to coordinate worldwide resources and apply multidisciplinary perspectives in resolving our client’s unique challenges. Our client base includes global pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, government agencies and hospitals and academic institutions around the world.
At Charles River, we are passionate about our role in improving the quality of people’s lives. Our mission, our excellent science and our strong sense of purpose guide us in all that we do, and we approach each day with the knowledge that our work helps to improve the health and well-being of many across the globe. We have proudly worked on 80% of the drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the past five years.
At Charles River Laboratories, we recognize and recruit all talent. We are a company committed to the principle of diversity and inclusion and work daily in this direction.
For more information, please visit www.criver.com.
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