Senior Payroll Specialist (APAC)

About Nebius: Nebius is leading a new era in cloud infrastructure for the global AI economy. We are building a full-stack AI cloud platform that supports developers and enterprises from data and model training through to production deployment, without the cost and complexity of building large in-house AI/ML infrastructure. Built by engineers, for engineers. From large-scale GPU orchestration to inference optimization, we own the hard problems across compute, storage, networking and applied AI. Listed on Nasdaq (NBIS) and headquartered in Amsterdam, we have a global footprint with R&D hubs across Europe, the UK, North America and Israel. Our team of 1,500+ includes hundreds of engineers with deep expertise across hardware, software and AI R&D. The role The Senior Payroll Specialist-APAC owns end-to-end payroll for the company’s APAC entities and plays a hands-on role in US payroll; both regions are core to the role. This role harmonizes, simplifies, and continuously improves payroll execution and payroll accounting across the region’s countries, entities, pay groups, payroll providers, and systems. This is to make sure payroll remains accurate, compliant, trusted, and understandable as the company grows in APAC without a proportional increase in manual work or risk. The role works alongside the US payroll owner on pay cycles, employment tax compliance, year-end, and controls, and provides full continuity during peak periods and absences. Your responsibilities will include: • Own end-to-end payroll execution for the company’s APAC entities across countries, pay groups, and payroll providers; define consistent execution standards that meet each jurisdiction’s statutory and employment requirements. • Ensure statutory compliance across APAC jurisdictions: income tax withholding, social security and provident fund contributions, employer levies, monthly and annual statutory filings and employee tax certificates, new-country and new-entity registrations, and timely resolution of authority notices. • Administer regulated and complex pay items accurately: statutory bonuses and gratuity, leave encashment, full-and-final settlements, equity income (RSU/option) taxation, benefits deductions, taxable perquisites, and expatriate or cross-border arrangements. • Support US payroll execution alongside the US payroll owner: process and review multistate pay cycles and off-cycle payments, own assigned workstreams in the US payroll calendar, share year-end delivery (W-2 season), and provide full continuity during peak periods and absences. • Drive process harmonization and simplification across APAC countries to reduce manual steps, handoffs, rework, and off-cycle runs. • Lead payroll execution during transitions (new country or entity launches, vendor changes, system changes, restructures/M&A), ensuring continuity and control. • Ensure payroll accounting remains clean as scope changes: consistent journals, accruals, reversals, and reconciliation standards across entities and currencies. • Monitor preventative controls by design, including SOX-aligned payroll controls; improve evidence pack quality and audit readiness. • Govern payroll providers against agreed SLAs and KPIs; drive remediation where service quality falls short. • Lead root-cause analysis for recurring payroll, accounting, or service failures; design and implement durable fixes. • Act as escalation owner for complex or sensitive pay issues in the region; provide authoritative explanations to senior stakeholders. • Partner with HR Ops, Finance, Legal/Compliance, benefits providers, and payroll vendors to deliver scalable operating models and service quality. • Provide training and guidance to new team joiners when needed. We expect you to have: • 7+ years of payroll