Payroll Manager

For 75 years, Charles River employees have worked together to assist in the discovery, development and safe manufacture of new drug therapies. When you join our family, you will have a significant impact on the health and well-being of people across the globe. Whether your background is in life sciences, finance, IT, sales or another area, your skills will play an important role in the work we perform. In return, we'll help you build a career that you can feel passionate about.

Job Summary
We are recruiting a
Payroll Manager (M/F) on a permanent contract
to lead payroll operations across France (4 sites, approximately 2,000 employees).

This role will be central in ensuring payroll quality and compliance with French labor, tax regulation and alignment with company policies, while ensuring accurate and timely payroll processing.

This role requires a strong leader with in-depth payroll expertise, excellent communication skills in both French and English, and proven experience managing payroll operations at scale.

Main Responsibilities

• Develop and mentor payroll team members composed of 9 people
• Lead and manage the end-to-end payroll processes within its scope, ensuring accurate and timely payroll processing.
• Act as the technical reference for the team, providing guidance and support on all payroll-related matters.
• Ensure compliance with all French labor laws, social security, tax regulations, and collective bargaining agreements.
• Partner with HR, Finance, and external providers to ensure data integrity and smooth operations.
• Generate and analyze payroll reports, KPIs, and variance explanations for management.
• Act as the primary contact for internal stakeholders, external vendors, and auditors regarding payroll matters.
• Monitor and implement changes in legislation, tax, and social contributions impacting payroll.
• Collaborate within a large, global payroll organization and partner closely with other country payroll managers to drive consistency and alignment across regions.
• Support and lead change initiatives, identifying and implementing process improvements to increase efficiency and accuracy.

Your profile

• With a master's degree in HR, Finance, accounting or related field, you have at least 5 years of managerial experience in leading payroll operations for large employee populations, preferably within a multi-national environment.
• Excellent knowledge of French payroll legislation including social contributions, tax regulations and labor law
• Strong expertise in payroll software - ADP Global View is required and advanced proficiency in Microsoft Excel
• Possess experience working with time and attendance systems; prior implementation experience and knowledge of Replicon Time would be a strong advantage
• Fluency in French and English (written and spoken)
• Accuracy, reliability, strong communication skills, and a collaborative mindset are key assets for success in this role.
• Strong organizational skills with a proven ability to handle high-volume payroll with accuracy and attention to detail.

Requirements

• Pharmaceutical collective agreement
• Contract: french permanent contract
• This position is a hybrid role, working on-site in L'abresle (69) or Evreux (27) in France ; means of transportation and domestic travel required.
• Compensation : to be discussed based on profile, over 14 months + bonus + profit sharing and incentive plan
• Transportation allowances, HO agreement, 60% coverage of health insurance, company restaurant, CSE

About Corporate Functions
The Corporate Functions provide operational support across Charles River in areas such as Human Resources, Finance, IT, Legal, Sales, Quality Assurance, Marketing, and Corporate Development. They partner with their colleagues across the company to develop and drive strategies and to set global standards. The functions are essential to providing a bridge between strategic vision and operational readiness, to ensure ongoing functional innovation and capability improvement.

About Charles River
Charles River is an early-stage contract research organization (CRO). We have built upon our foundation of laboratory animal medicine and science to develop a diverse portfolio of discovery and safety assessment services, both Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) and non-GLP, to support clients from target identification through preclinical development. Charles River also provides a suite of products and services to support our clients' clinical laboratory testing needs and manufacturing activities. Utilizing this broad portfolio of products and services enables our clients to create a more flexible drug development model, which reduces their costs, enhances their productivity and effectiveness to increase speed to market.

With over 20,000 employees within 110 facilities in over 20 countries around the globe, we are strategically positioned to coordinate worldwide resources and apply multidisciplinary perspectives in resolving our client's unique challenges. Our client base includes global pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, government agencies and hospitals and academic institutions around the world.

At Charles River, we are passionate about our role in improving the quality of people's lives. Our mission, our excellent science and our strong sense of purpose guide us in all that we do, and we approach each day with the knowledge that our work helps to improve the health and well-being of many across the globe. We have proudly supported the development of 80% of the drugs approved by the FDA in the last five years.

At Charles River Laboratories, we recognize and recruit all talent. We are a company committed to fostering a sense of belonging and work daily in this direction.

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