Senior Payroll & Compliance Specialist

What the Role Is

As our Senior Payroll & Compliance Specialist, you'll own the most tangible ways we look after our team: paying people correctly and staying compliant in a fast-changing regulatory environment. You'll do that for a distributed workforce of 600–1,000 employees across ~35 states, 300+ of them nonexempt/hourly. You'll report to our People Operations Manager and work most closely with People Ops, Accounting, and our payroll partner, Newfront — owning our U.S. compliance calendar end to end (45+ recurring obligations a year across about a dozen jurisdictions), with real room to redesign the steps that slow us down. If you've supported complex, multi-state payroll for a large nonexempt workforce, take pride in getting it right, and like being the steady hand behind the scenes, this role will energize you.

Who You Are

• You run multi-state U.S. payroll end to end in an enterprise HRIS (Paylocity or comparable) — inputs, timecard corrections, off-cycle and termination pay, garnishments, and final review before funding.
• You've owned a compliance calendar covering EEO-1, OSHA, nondiscrimination testing, and state reporting — plus background checks, I-9 review, required trainings, and policy creation and revision. You surface deadlines before they're urgent.
• Direct experience with California or New York employment law is a strong plus. These are our two most demanding states — same-day final pay, pay data reporting, and local rules that change often. It's learnable, but if you've run compliance in either, you'll ramp much faster.
• You turn legal redlines into usable policy. You've worked with Legal and outside counsel on handbook language and translated it into something employees will actually follow.
• You improve a process, then prove it. You test against known-good output, build in the checks that show it's still running clean, and leave a written SOP behind. You reach for AI naturally to move faster — at Babylist, every team uses it daily.
• You can explain a paycheck to the person who earned it, and the numbers to the people who sign off on them.
• You hold a deadline. You plan backward from the pay date and the filing date, stay responsive during processing windows, and raise a flag early when a date is at risk.
• You have 5–8 years in payroll and compliance, including 3+ years running multi-state U.S. payroll. CPP, FPC, SHRM-CP, SHRM-SCP, PHR, or SPHR aren't required, but any would cement your expertise.

How You Will Make An Impact

• You'll run two payroll cycles end to end — weekly for our fulfillment center and hourly showroom teams, bi-weekly for corporate and salaried showroom — handling every change for a large hourly population: new hires, terminations, clawbacks, corrections, direct deposit updates, and ad-hoc termination pay.
• You'll audit every pre-process register before funding and work discrepancies with Newfront until they're resolved.
• You'll be the person employees reach when a paycheck doesn't make sense — questions answered or routed within one business day.
• You'll own the U.S. compliance calendar through annual filings — EEO-1, CA Pay Data, and OSHA 300 across corporate, both showrooms, and the fulfillment center — and translate legislative change across ~35 states into the handful of actions that actually apply, then brief the People team.
• You'll run screenings that hold up under review: background check review and escalation, plus quarterly health exclusion checks.
• You'll take point on the annual "Compliance Refresh" each February, chasing it to 100% completion across every eligible employee and contractor, and partner with Legal and outside counsel on handbook and policy review every two years.
• You'll design the internal controls across payroll and compliance and keep the evidence trail current — the same trail that carries our annual workers' compensation and external financial audits.
• You'll build automation and prove it works — skills, scheduled tasks, and workflow tooling, tested against known-good output and instrumented so you can see it's still running clean. Some SOPs exist; you'll build the rest.

Why This Role

• You'll help redesign payroll for a high-growth company, with AI and automation written into the role itself — in how the job is defined and how it's measured.
• Payroll and compliance live in one seat. You'll see the whole picture, from the register to the filing, and make each decision knowing exactly what it does to the other.
• The controls you design get used and reviewed — auditors look at your evidence trail, Finance and Legal rely on it — so the work carries weight well past our team. You'll have a manager and a director building alongside you.

About Compensation

We use a market-based approach to compensation. The starting salary range for this role is:

$93,034 to $124,085

Your starting salary will be based on your location, experience, and qualifications, with increases over time tied to performance, role growth, and internal pay equity.

Who We Are

Babylist is the leading platform for expecting and new families. More than 10 million people shop with Babylist every year, making it the go-to destination for seamless purchasing, guidance, and expert recommendations. As a modern, AI-forward tech company, Babylist has expanded from a universal registry into a full ecosystem — the Babylist Shop, Babylist Health, Babylist Money, NYC and LA showrooms, branded content, and more — generating $750M in revenue in 2025. Building the generational brand in baby, Babylist is reshaping the $235B kids and baby market and helping parents feel confident, connected, and cared for at every step.

Our Ways of Working

Babylist is remote-first with team members across the U.S. and Canada who move fast, think smart, and use AI as part of how they work every day — not as an experiment, as an expectation. We come together twice a year to build the relationships behind the work, and we hire people who are genuinely excited about what's possible and prove it through how they show up.

Why You Will Love Working At Babylist

Our Culture

• We work with focus and intention, then step away to recharge
• We believe in exceptional management, and we invest in the tools and the time to connect with colleagues
• We build products that positively impact millions of people's lives
• AI is part of how we work, not a side experiment. You'll have leading tools like Claude and ChatGPT from day one, with no waiting on access, so the busywork gets handled and your judgment goes where it counts

Growth & Development

• Competitive pay and meaningful opportunities for career advancement
• We believe technology and data can solve hard problems
• We're committed to career progression and performance-based advancement

Benefits

• Company-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Retirement savings plan with company matching and flexible spending accounts
• Generous paid parental leave and PTO
• Winter Wonder Week: the whole company takes a paid week off at the end of the year, whether or not you celebrate anything, so everyone's out at once and comes back refreshed
• Remote work stipend to set up your office
• Perks for physical, mental, and emotional health, parenting, childcare, and financial planning

Important Notices

Recorded Interviews. Babylist uses an interview recording tool to record and transcribe interviews for evaluation purposes in accordance with applicable privacy laws. By participating in an interview, you consent to this recording and transcription.

Interview Integrity. AI is part of how we work at Babylist. We expect you to use it too. Your application and interviews should still reflect you and your own thinking. We'll tell you when AI is encouraged. Misrepresentation at any stage may result in removal from consideration for this and future roles.

How We Review Applications We use AI throughout our hiring process to help review, screen, and assess applications. These tools support our team's review; they do not replace it, and every hiring decision is made by a person.

Connections at Babylist. If you have a family member or close personal relationship with a current Babylist employee, please let your recruiter know. This helps us keep our process fair and transparent for everyone.

Protect Yourself from Scams. All official outreach comes from the Babylist Talent Team via @babylist.com email addresses only. We will never ask for payment or personal financial information. If you receive outreach via WhatsApp, Telegram, or a non-Babylist email, it's not us. Verify open roles at babylist.com/careers.