The Role: Solution Architect - Global Payroll and EUPT Location: Reading, UK Position Type: Contract Inside IR35 Remote work option Available: 3- Days Work from Office Job Description: Essential Experience * Proven experience (5yrs +) designing and delivering enterprise-scale technology solutions across platforms, products, or domains. * Excellent collaboration skills with the ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly to technical and non-technical peers and stakeholders alike. * Payroll Domain Expertise * Proven experience designing and delivering global payroll solutions across multiple countries, payroll providers and legislative jurisdictions. * Deep understanding of end-to-end payroll processes including gross-to-net calculations, taxation, statutory deductions, pensions, benefits, payroll controls and reconciliation. * Experience defining global payroll templates, common payroll operating models and management of country-specific deviations. * Experience with payroll transformation programmes involving payroll vendor consolidation, platform replacement or country migrations. * Experience designing payroll finance integrations including payroll journals, costing, accruals, reconciliation and General Ledger posting. * EU Pay Transparency & Reward Expertise * Strong understanding of EU Pay Transparency Directive requirements, including pay gap reporting, employee right-to-information requests and regulatory disclosure obligations. * Experience designing solutions supporting pay equity analysis, compensation reporting and transparency reporting across multiple European markets. * Ability to model and govern reward, compensation, payroll, benefits and workforce data required for EUPT reporting. * Experience supporting complex reporting requirements spanning multiple countries, legal entities and regulatory frameworks. * Workday & P&C Technology Expertise * Experience architecting solutions using Workday HCM, Workday Compensation and Workday reporting capabilities. * Experience with Workday Prism and enterprise data hub patterns for consolidating payroll, HCM, reward and workforce data. * Experience designing solutions integrating Workday with multiple external payroll providers and non-Workday HR platforms. * Integration & Data Architecture * Experience designing secure payroll integration architectures using SFTP, encryption, managed file transfer and batch processing patterns. * Strong knowledge of payroll file ingestion, transformation, standardization and harmonization processes across multiple payroll vendors. * Security, Compliance & Governance * Strong understanding of GDPR, payroll data security, data retention and audit requirements. * Experience designing solutions handling highly sensitive colleague payroll and compensation information with appropriate security controls and segregation of duties. * Experience establishing data quality, governance and traceability controls for regulatory reporting solutions. * Preferred Payroll Experience * Delivered enterprise Cloud Pay payroll transformations within a large multinational retailer. * Experience working with multiple European payroll providers and payroll outsourcing partners