Why UKG:
At UKG, the work you do matters. The code you ship, the decisions you make, and the care you show a customer all add up to real impact. Today, tens of millions of workers start and end their days with our workforce operating platform. Helping people get paid, grow in their careers, and shape the future of their industries. That’s what we do.
We never stop learning. We never stop challenging the norm. We push for better, and we celebrate the wins along the way. Here, you’ll get flexibility that’s real, benefits you can count on, and a team that succeeds together. Because at UKG, your work matters—and so do you.
Job Summary
UKG is seeking a customer-focused and experienced leader to manage the Tax Filing and Amendments function within Payment Services, Managed Services. This role leads day-to-day production delivery, people development, operational controls, and cross-functional issue resolution to ensure payroll tax filings and amendments are completed accurately, timely, and with clear documentation.
The Manager is accountable for building a high-performing team, strengthening service quality, managing risk, and driving scalable process and technology improvements. The role requires strong judgment, payroll tax domain knowledge, operational discipline, and the ability to lead through peak filing cycles, customer escalations, agency dependencies, and complex compliance scenarios and customer satisfaction.
Role Complexity and Business Impact
- Owns a compliance-sensitive operation where filing accuracy, amendment timeliness, documentation quality, and agency responses can directly impact customer experience, penalties, interest, and liability exposure.
- Manages a high-volume production environment with quarter-end, year-end, amended return, reconciliation, notice, and escalation dependencies across federal, state, and local jurisdictions.
- Balances daily execution with continuous improvement, including quality controls, root-cause analysis, knowledge management, automation opportunities, and scalable operating practices.
- Partners with Tax Filing, Tax Research, Payments, Product, Customer Support, technology teams, agencies, and senior leaders to resolve systemic issues and improve operational outcomes.
- Leads managers, team leads, or senior specialists where applicable, and is expected to strengthen leadership capability, accountability, and readiness across the team.
Key Responsibilities
People Leadership and Team Development
- Lead, coach, and develop a team responsible for tax filing, amendment processing, reconciliations, case management, and compliance support.
- Conduct regular one-on-ones, performance discussions, development planning, recognition, and skill-building interventions.
- Build leadership depth by mentoring team leads or senior specialists and creating clear ownership for production, quality, training, and escalations.
- Hire, onboard, manage performance, and support engagement and retention in alignment with UKG people practices.
Operational Delivery and Controls
- Own daily, monthly, quarterly, and annual production readiness for tax filings and amendments, ensuring timely completion, accuracy, and complete documentation.
- Manage workload allocation, queue health, staffing coverage, turnaround time, case aging, productivity, quality, and SLA adherence.
- Implement quality controls and audit-ready documentation standards that support internal review, agency responses, and customer communication.
- Provide backup leadership coverage and support after-hours or peak-cycle needs when business-critical deadlines require it.
Tax Filing, Amendments, and Compliance Oversight
- Oversee amended return workflows, filing corrections, reconciliations, rejected filings, agency notices, tax variance analysis, and customer-impacting tax issues.
- Ensure issues are researched end to end, supported by clear evidence, and resolved with appropriate communication to customers, agencies, and internal partners.
- Guide teams through complex multi-jurisdiction scenarios involving federal, state, local, SUI, SIT, and related payroll tax requirements.
- Escalate high-risk service, compliance, or customer-impacting issues to senior leadership with facts, impact, recommended path, and ownership.
Stakeholder, Customer, and Cross-Functional Management
- Build strong relationships with internal partners across Payment Services, Tax Research, Product, Technology, Customer Support, and senior leadership.
- Represent the function in customer, agency, and internal escalation discussions when leadership judgment or service recovery is required.
- Communicate operational status, risks, trends, decisions, and action plans in a clear, concise, and data-backed manner.
- Drive high customer satisfaction by providing desired resolutions on the requests.
- Partner with peers to align processes, reduce handoff gaps, and improve consistency across Managed Services tax operations.
Process Excellence, Reporting, and Transformation
- Generate and use operational metrics to manage performance, forecast capacity, identify risks, and provide leadership visibility.
- Identify recurring defects, root causes, training gaps, and automation opportunities that improve productivity, quality, and customer outcomes.
- Sponsor or support technology and process initiatives that simplify workflows, strengthen controls, and improve scalability.
- Maintain and improve SOPs, training content, knowledge articles, quality checklists, and reusable operating standards.
Approximate Allocation of Time
Focus Area Approx. % of Time
Lead team delivery against production, quality, SLA, and compliance goals 45%
People leadership, coaching, development, performance, and readiness 25%
Process improvement, reporting, governance, quality controls, and documentation 15%
Customer, agency, stakeholder, and senior leadership escalations 10%
Cross-functional technology or process alignment initiatives 5%
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Business, Commerce, Taxation, or a related field, or equivalent work experience.
- 12 to 15 years of overall experience in payroll tax, tax filing, tax amendments, tax research, compliance operations, payment services, shared services, or a related services environment.
- 5+ years of people-management experience, including coaching, performance management, team development, and handling leaders, team leads, or senior specialists where applicable.
- 10+ years of process, operational excellence, quality, controls, reporting, or service-delivery management experience in a deadline-driven environment.
- Strong understanding of U.S. payroll tax concepts, including federal, state, and local tax filing requirements, amendments, reconciliations, notices, and agency interactions.
- Experience managing operational metrics such as productivity, quality, SLA adherence, aging, turnaround time, customer escalations, and risk trends.
- Ability to lead through ambiguity, prioritize competing deadlines, and make sound decisions in compliance-sensitive and customer-impacting situations.
- Proficiency with Microsoft Office, especially Excel, Word, and PowerPoint; experience with case-management and payroll or tax filing platforms preferred.
Preferred Qualifications
- Payroll tax, payroll services, garnishment, financial operations, HCM, or managed-services experience supporting multi-state U.S. customers.
- Experience leading teams through quarter-end, year-end, amendment backlogs, transitions, new work launches, or process stabilization.
- Experience with root-cause analysis, continuous improvement, Lean/Six Sigma, automation enablement, or quality frameworks.
- CPP, FPC, Enrolled Agent, Certified Treasury Professional, or other relevant certification is a plus.
- Experience with UKG Pro, UKG Ready, MasterTax, Salesforce, agency portals, or similar payroll tax and case-management tools.
Core Competencies
- People leadership and coaching
- Customer focus and service ownership
- Payroll tax and compliance judgment
- Operational discipline and control mindset
- Analytical thinking and root-cause problem solving
- Stakeholder and executive communication
- Change leadership and continuous improvement
- Accountability, collaboration, and sound decision-making
Measures of Success
- Sustained achievement of production, quality, SLA, and case-aging expectations.
- Accurate, timely, and well-documented filings, amendments, reconciliations, and escalations.
- Reduced repeat issues through root-cause analysis, process improvement, and knowledge management.
- Strong employee engagement, leadership readiness, and team capability development.
- Improved customer and stakeholder confidence through transparent communication and reliable issue resolution.
Disclaimer
This job description reflects the general nature of work performed and is not intended to include a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities, or qualifications required for the role. Management may revise responsibilities or assign different tasks as business needs change.
Company Overview:
UKG is the Workforce Operating Platform that puts workforce understanding to work. With the world's largest collection of workforce insights, and people-first AI, our ability to reveal unseen ways to build trust, amplify productivity, and empower talent, is unmatched. It's this expertise that equips our customers with the intelligence to solve any challenge in any industry — because great organizations know their workforce is their competitive edge. Learn more at ukg.com.
UKG is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and is committed to promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace, including the recruitment process.
Disability Accommodation in the Application and Interview Process
For individuals with disabilities that need additional assistance at any point in the application and interview process, please email
[email protected]
