---
title: 'Global Payroll Lead at Mercor'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/global-payroll-lead-mercor-san-francisco-0adqjp670wec'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-07'
---

# Global Payroll Lead at Mercor

- **Company:** Mercor
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $160k–$185k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-10-22
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-07
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/mercor/f535f9dc-8ce7-4aa5-abd2-bf37c654c282

## Job description

## About Mercor

Mercor's mission is to organize human intelligence to power the AI economy. We're a leading AI data company, building the layer between human expertise and frontier models. Millions of domain experts on the platform are paid over $4 million per day to train frontier AI models. Mercor's APEX benchmark family measures AI's real-world impact on professional work. Mercor Enterprise brings this same infrastructure to Fortune 500 companies: helping companies capture how their best people actually work, translating that expertise directly back into agents.

Mercor is creating a new category of work where expertise powers AI advancement. Achieving this requires an ambitious, fast-paced and deeply committed team. You’ll work alongside researchers, operators, and AI companies at the forefront of shaping the systems that are redefining society. Mercor is a profitable Series C company valued at $10 billion. We work in-person five days a week in our San Francisco, NYC, or London offices.

## About the Role

Mercor is seeking a high-execution payroll leader to spearhead global payroll delivery while scaling our underlying operational infrastructure. In this role, you will hold end-to-end accountability for payroll execution schedules, vendor governance, internal controls, general ledger reconciliations, and complex issue resolution, all while driving high-impact automation initiatives. Additionally, you will orchestrate the seamless transition of acquired talent onto Mercor's unified payroll architecture.

Working cross-functionally, you will collaborate closely with Accounting, People Ops, Finance Systems, Legal, and international payroll partners. This position demands a mix of strategic oversight and hands-on execution—diving deep into operational mechanics, driving swift decision-making within structured framework guidelines, and proactively flagging operational bottlenecks to executive leadership.

## What You'll Do

- Run employee payroll cycles across assigned countries, coordinating inputs, validations, approvals, funding deadlines, and provider processing so employees are paid accurately and on time.
- Review new hires, departures, compensation changes, bonuses, benefits, deductions, and equity-related payroll inputs with functional owners; investigate exceptions before approval.
- Reconcile payroll outputs to approved inputs, funding, and accounting records. Partner with Accounting on journals, accruals, balance sheet reconciliations, and month-end close.
- Maintain country calendars and evidence of required filings and remittances, working with providers and local advisers to resolve issues and complete year-end activities.
- Lead payroll workstreams for acquisitions and new-country launches, including data mapping, cutover planning, testing, parallel runs where appropriate, and post-launch reconciliation.
- Improve HRIS-to-payroll data flows, approval workflows, and reporting. Deliver scoped implementations and vendor transitions with documented requirements and acceptance criteria.
- Build operating procedures, backup coverage, access controls, and audit evidence, maintaining separate preparation and approval responsibilities for payroll and payments.
- Resolve employee pay questions clearly and promptly. Track accuracy, on-time delivery, reconciliation aging, and issue resolution, and address recurring causes.
- Automate repeatable checks and reporting using approved tools, with validation, human review, and appropriate protection of employee data.

## What We're Looking For

- 7+ years of progressive payroll experience in high-growth tech startups
- Hands-on ownership of US payroll and experience delivering payroll in additional countries through local teams or providers.
- Strong understanding of payroll processing, reconciliations, statutory deadlines, controls, and year-end reporting, with judgment about when to involve local tax or legal specialists.
- Experience delivering a payroll optimization, vendor transition, acquisition integration, or new-country launch from planning through stabilization.
- Practical experience with an enterprise HRIS and payroll platform, including data validation, reporting, testing, and troubleshooting. Rippling or comparable systems experience is valuable.
- Strong analytical skills and attention to detail, with the ability to manage competing deadlines and influence partners without direct authority.
- Clear communication, sound judgment with confidential information, and willingness to stay close to operational work.
- A degree in Accounting, Finance, HR, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

## Nice to Have

- EMEA or APAC payroll
- Equity or mobility payroll
- Hourly payroll and timekeeping
- CPP or comparable certification

## Compensation

- Base cash comp from $160K - $185k
- Generous equity grant vested over 4 years
- Up to $15k Relocation bonus
- $10K housing bonus (if you live within 0.5 miles of our office)
- $1.5K monthly stipend for meals
- Free Equinox membership
- $200 monthly laundry reimbursement
- $200 monthly personal wellness reimbursement
- Health, Dental, Vision insurance
- 401(k) with company match

## About Mercor

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Mercor organizes human intelligence to power the AI economy by connecting domain experts with frontier AI labs and enterprises for model training, evaluation, and deployment.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series C)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA (with offices in New York City and London)
- **Founded**: 2023
- **Founders**: Brendan Foody & Adarsh Hiremath (Co-founders & Co-CEOs)

## Core Business
- Primary industry: AI Data & Infrastructure, Human-in-the-Loop AI, Enterprise AI
- Target customers: Frontier AI labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.), Fortune 500 enterprises deploying AI in production, and domain experts seeking high-value AI work
- Mission: Organizing human intelligence to power the AI economy — building the layer between human expertise and frontier models.

## Products & Services
- **Mercor Platform**: A global network of millions of domain experts across 300+ professional fields, paid over $3 million per day to train frontier AI models. Experts are found and vetted using dynamic, role-specific AI interviews.
- **APEX Benchmark**: A benchmark family that measures AI's real-world impact on professional work, setting a standard for whether AI can perform economically valuable work.
- **Mercor Enterprise**: Brings Mercor's expert network and evaluation infrastructure to Fortune 500 companies, deploying custom AI agents, staffing teams with vetted domain experts, and helping organizations encode their own knowledge into AI systems.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: $10 billion valuation (as of Series C)
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding — $350 million Series C (recently raised); company is profitable
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not explicitly named in provided sources, but the company works with leading AI labs and Fortune 500 enterprises
- **Growth Signals**: 
  - Named to Bloomberg's "2026 24 AI Startups to Watch"
  - Forbes AI 50 (2025)
  - Forbes Cloud 100 (2025)
  - LinkedIn Top Startup (2025)
  - Described as "the fastest-growing company in the world"
  - Tens of thousands of skilled professionals earning an average of more than $95/hour on the platform

## Competitive Advantages
- **Massive, vetted expert network**: Millions of domain experts across 300+ fields, found and vetted via AI-driven interviews — a hard-to-replicate moat.
- **Direct frontier model exposure**: Every team works directly with frontier models, training them and building around them — most companies haven't imagined this level of integration.
- **Profitability at scale**: Profitable at Series C with a $10B valuation, indicating strong unit economics.
- **End-to-end AI infrastructure**: From expert sourcing and vetting to model evaluation (APEX) to enterprise deployment — a vertically integrated stack.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scaling the expert network**: Continuing to onboard millions of domain experts globally to meet the insatiable demand for high-quality human training data.
- **Enterprise AI deployment**: Expanding Mercor Enterprise to help Fortune 500 companies encode organizational knowledge into AI systems and deploy custom agents.
- **Benchmarking AI's economic impact**: Growing the APEX benchmark as the standard for measuring whether AI can perform economically valuable work.
- **Preparing for AGI**: The company's founding thesis is about answering what role humans will play in the economy as AGI approaches.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: "Built for people who thrive in high-velocity environments." Values include Intensity, Simplicity, User Obsession, High Standards, Can-Do Attitude, and Time Travelers (thinking ahead).
- **Work model**: In-person collaboration from offices in San Francisco, New York City, and London. No remote option — the company believes in-person collaboration helps move faster and solve harder problems.
- **Engineering culture**: Direct exposure to frontier AI research, labs, and startups. Every team works with frontier models daily. Described as "the fastest-growing company in the world."
- **Compensation**: Generous equity grants, competitive salaries (ranges from $100K–$500K depending on role), and a "proximity bonus" (generous annual housing support).
- **Benefits**: 
  - Unlimited paid vacation and sick days
  - Free Equinox membership (premium fitness access)
  - Monthly wellness stipend and free mental health services
  - Monthly food stipend
  - 401k with employer match
  - Parental leave for both birthing and non-birthing parents
- **Team**: "A team of ambitious, diverse people who want to work on what matters most." Open roles across Engineering (31 roles), Operations (15 roles), Enterprise (5 roles), Finance (4 roles), and more.

## Sources
1. [mercor.com](https://www.mercor.com/)
2. [mercor.com/careers](https://www.mercor.com/careers/)
3. [mercor.com/mission](https://www.mercor.com/mission/)
4. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/mercor](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/mercor)
5. [linkedin.com/company/mercor-ai](https://www.linkedin.com/company/mercor-ai)

## Other roles at Mercor

- [Partnerships Lead, AI Infrastructure & Post-Training](https://feeny.ai/job/partnerships-lead-ai-infrastructure-post-training-mercor-mercor-hq-kv8p4kg5hjmm) — Mercor Hq, 181 Fremont Street
- [Partnerships Lead, Consulting & SI Partners](https://feeny.ai/job/partnerships-lead-consulting-si-partners-mercor-mercor-hq-yzde539yj2wv) — Mercor Hq, 181 Fremont Street
- [Engagement Manager, Legal](https://feeny.ai/job/engagement-manager-legal-mercor-san-francisco-4wjy3zs32zva) — San Francisco, CA
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