Senior Payroll Officer

About the role

We’re excited to be recruiting for a Senior Payroll Officer (12-month Fixed Term Contract) to join our friendly and supportive Payroll team at DS Smith’s Business Service Centre in Caerphilly. This is a fantastic opportunity to make a real impact while gaining exposure to a high-volume, fast-paced UK payroll environment.

In this role, you’ll take ownership of the administration and customer-facing aspects of our UK Payroll service, ensuring the accurate and timely payment of approximately 5,000 colleagues. You’ll play a key part in delivering an exceptional payroll experience, supporting employees across the UK with professionalism and care.

Collaboration is at the heart of this role - you’ll work closely with your team to manage and resolve payroll queries, while also helping to educate colleagues across the business to build understanding and confidence in payroll processes.

Key Responsibilities include:

• Process the monthly payroll, ensuring all employees are paid accurately and on time

• Ensure tax and statutory obligations (HMRC, NI) are correctly calculated and applied

• Oversee the preparation and distribution of payslips to colleagues across the UK

• Manage payroll documentation, ensuring it is processed efficiently and kept up to date

• Proactively investigate and resolve discrepancies, escalating where necessary

• Maintain a strong focus on delivering excellent customer satisfaction through accurate and responsive payroll support

About you

The ideal candidate will be a proactive and detail-focused payroll professional who takes pride in delivering accurate, reliable work that supports colleagues across the business. They will bring a strong understanding of payroll and HR processes, alongside a customer-first mindset and a genuine willingness to help others. Comfortable working with data and systems, they will use their analytical thinking to identify and resolve discrepancies, while continuously looking for ways to improve. As a collaborative team player, they will contribute positively to the team environment, sharing knowledge and supporting others, while also taking ownership of their responsibilities and helping drive positive change.

• Significant understanding of HR and Payroll processes

• Experience with integrated HR and Payroll systems (ideally Workday)

• Advanced Excel skills

• Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities

• Experience handling employee queries in a professional, customer-focused way

• Solid knowledge of HMRC Tax and National Insurance

• Experience with manual calculations

• International payroll (EMEA) experience is desirable

Benefits

• A competitive salary and discretionary bonus

• 25 days’ holiday + bank holidays, plus banked hours

• Hybrid working: 3 days in the office, 2 from home

• Pension scheme, life assurance, income protection

• Employee assistance programme and digital GP access

• Cycle to work scheme and discounts on shopping, travel and more

Location: Caerphilly - we operate on a hybrid basis, with 3 days in the office and 2 at home

About us

We are DS Smith, together with International Paper, we are a global leader in sustainable packaging solutions and other fibre-based products. We believe a better, more sustainable tomorrow is possible with the right people, who challenge and support one another to enact positive change. We employ more than 65,000 colleagues in North America and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), who are experts in innovation, manufacturing, design, sales, sustainability, supply chain, and much more. Together with our customers, we make the world safer and more productive, one sustainable packaging solution at a time. Become part of a world-leading organisation and do your best work with us!

Fair recruitment at DS Smith

To fulfil our purpose of redefining packaging for a changing world, we aim to build a diverse, motivated, and engaged workforce. Our goal is to create a culture of inclusion where everyone is treated fairly, differences are valued, and everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed.

Our people come from diverse backgrounds, bring different perspectives, ideas and experiences to generate unique solutions focused on present and future sustainability challenges. We welcome all candidates to apply, even those not meeting all criteria

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