Workday Product Owner – Payroll, Time and Absence

About the position

This is not a traditional product role. As the Workday Payroll, Time & Absence Product Owner, you will architect the strategic roadmap for our Payroll technology ecosystem. You will play a pivotal role in harmonizing business processes, payroll workflows, and data architecture to drive informed decision-making and elevate the employee experience. Serving as the executive-facing product leader for Payroll, Time & Absence systems, you will sit within HR while operating at the intersection of strategy, technology, and operations. You will own the roadmap end-to-end, influence HR priorities, and help lead delivery within a scaled Agile environment. This role is ideal for someone who thrives on ownership, brings a strong point of view, and wants to leave a lasting impact on how a growing organization leverages Workday.

Responsibilities

• Own the Strategy: Collaborate with multiple stakeholders to evolve the multi-year vision, strategy, and roadmap for Payroll, Time & Absence technology.
• Partner with senior HR and business leaders to align product direction with HR priorities and growth goals.
• Serve as the voice of the business, influencing decisions across HR, IT, Finance, and external partners.
• Establish and track KPIs to measure product success, adoption, and business impact.
• Lead Product Execution: Own and prioritize a complex product backlog, balancing strategic initiatives, regulatory needs, and operational improvements.
• Lead engagement within the Agile Release Train (ART), including PI planning, sprint execution, and release alignment.
• Translate high-level business needs into clear, actionable user stories and scalable solutions.
• Ensure high-quality delivery through rigorous testing, validation, and continuous improvement.
• Drive Integration & Optimization: Oversee the ecosystem of integrations across Workday, payroll, finance, and third-party benefits providers.
• Continuously evaluate system performance, data integrity, and user experience to identify opportunities for optimization.
• Champion automation, simplification, and innovation across Payroll, Time & Absence processes.
• Elevate the Employee Experience & Governance: Collaborate with the IT team to design solutions that improve the end-to-end employee journey.
• Ensure system compliance with regulatory requirements while minimizing operational friction.
• Proactively identify risks and implement scalable governance and controls.
• Serve as the primary HR representative within the Agile Release Train (ART), ensuring HR’s voice and needs are incorporated into planning and delivery.
• Leads the agile team’s priorities and updates in daily standups, sprint planning, and other agile ceremonies; working in collaboration with HR stakeholders, user experience design, & a variety of technology partners.
• Define and maintain the HR product vision for their focus area, roadmap, and backlog, aligning with HR strategy and business priorities.
• Partner with HR leadership, business stakeholders, and IT release train teams to prioritize enhancements, bug fixes, and new functionality.
• Develops deep understanding of the target user, the end-to-end customer experience, the product vision, and success criteria for the product portfolio.
• Partners with HR stakeholders to understand and influence product strategy and roadmaps, aggregate and conceive ideas for enhancing product performance and achieving product success/KPIs.
• Backlog & Agile Delivery: Translate HR business requirements into user stories, acceptance criteria, and features for development teams.
• Prioritize backlog items based on business value, compliance requirements, and employee experience impact.
• Participate in PI (Program Increment) Planning, Sprint Reviews, and Retrospectives, ensuring continuous alignment between HR and the release train.
• Validate solutions before release, ensuring quality, compliance, and usability.
• Leads Agile backlog grooming sessions by presenting upcoming features to our development team.
• Partners with solution architects and other technical leads to ensure their solutions effectively address HR’s product and program priorities.
• Collaborates with IT and business stakeholders to lead requirements gathering, determine features, and write user stories for HRIS products that include acceptance criteria and acceptance tests.
• Participate in team demo with the primary responsibility of reviewing and business acceptance.
• Builds and maintains a prioritized product backlog, with input from HR managers, HRIS, and other business stakeholders.
• Can effectively communicate prioritization decisions and the agile process to various teams.
• Spokesperson of business strategy to our development teams.
• Highly available to technical team during development sprints in order to answer real-time questions and provide clarity to user stories or remove roadblocks.
• Partners with scrum teams on rollout and post-production support.
• Reviews analysis and performance monitoring for specified products.
• Supports problem resolution, resolves issues and acts on feedback and usage of in-life products.
• Contributes to product collateral and monitors results and feedback from product launches.
• Stakeholder Management: Act as the liaison between HR and IT, translating technical concepts into HR-friendly language and vice versa.
• Facilitate regular feedback sessions with HR stakeholders to capture evolving needs.
• Provide status updates, release notes, and change impacts to HR teams and business leaders.
• Governance, Compliance, and Data: Ensure HRIS solutions meet data governance, compliance, and security requirements.
• Collaborate with HR operations and compliance teams to ensure changes align with regulatory requirements.
• Monitor adoption and system usage, using metrics and analytics to drive continuous improvement.
• Focus Area : The HR Product Owner may be aligned to one of the following HR focus areas. While core product ownership responsibilities remain consistent, each area requires specialized knowledge and focus: Total Rewards Responsibilities: Partner with Rewards leaders to optimize system support for compensation planning, pay equity analysis, and benefits administration.
• Ensure integrations with payroll, finance, and third-party benefits vendors are accurate and seamless.
• Manage system configurations to support annual compensation cycles and open enrollment.
• Talent & Employee Lifecycle Responsibilities: Collaborate with Talent Acquisition and Talent Management leaders to improve hiring workflows, onboarding, and career development systems.
• Partner with Talent Acquisition to ensure third-party recruiting vendor integration with RaceTrac HRIS.
• Enhance performance management, succession planning, and learning system functionality to support growth and retention strategies.
• Ensure smooth data transitions across the full employee lifecycle (from hire to exit).
• Pay, Time & Attendance Responsibilities: Partner with Payroll and HR Operations to optimize pay processes, accruals, overtime, and compliance rules within the system.
• Support accurate and efficient scheduling, attendance tracking, and labor reporting.
• Ensure system capabilities align with complex workforce needs, including retail, food service, and transportation employees.

Requirements

• Proven experience owning and driving product strategy in a complex, cross-functional environment
• Deep expertise in Payroll, Time & Absence and supporting technologies
• Strong experience with Workday (highly preferred) or similar Payroll platforms
• Demonstrated success operating within Agile frameworks at scale (SAFe or similar)
• Ability to influence senior stakeholders and translate business strategy into technology outcomes
• Analytical mindset with a track record of using data to drive decisions and outcomes
• Bachelor’s degree or certifications preferred
• 7+ years of experience in product ownership, HR technology, or related roles
• Experience leading enterprise-level initiatives from concept through delivery and optimization preferred
• Familiarity with compensation cycles, merit and bonus processes, and benefits enrollment systems.
• Understanding compensation structures, merit and bonus cycles, and benefits administration.
• Knowledge of compliance requirements (ACA, FLSA, ERISA) and benefits vendor integrations.
• Deep understanding of talent acquisition processes, onboarding, learning & development, performance management, succession planning, and employee data management.
• Experience supporting applicant tracking systems (ATS), learning management systems (LMS), and career/talent frameworks.
• Strong understanding of payroll operations, time tracking, scheduling, and compliance with labor laws (FLSA, FMLA, state-level requirements).
• Familiarity with hourly workforce management systems and integrations to payroll providers.

Nice-to-haves

• Workday experience (highly preferred)

Benefits

• Hybrid schedule that balances in-person collaboration with flexibility