Senior Associate, Payroll Operations

Westport, CT
Full-time
$165,000-$250,000
Posted Oct 9, 2026

Skills

Accounting
Communication
Compliance
Microsoft Excel
Operations
Payroll
Workday

Job description

About the Finance Department 

Finance leads Bridgewater’s financial strategy and serves as a strategic advisor to businesses across the firm. We partner with leaders to translate strategy into financially sound plans, evaluate growth opportunities, and make informed decisions about how to allocate capital. Our work builds financial resilience and drives long-term shareholder value, supported by rigorous analysis, reporting, and controls. We are also transforming how Finance operates , using AI and automation to deliver faster insights and focus more of our expertise on the decisions that shape the firm’s future.  

About Your Role

We are seeking a high-agency operator to serve as the right hand to our Director, Payroll and help reshape how payroll runs at one of the world’s premier asset management firms. The role has two aims: provide real leverage to payroll leadership and reduce key-person risk, and partner with the Director to redesign the payroll operating model through better process, technology, and controls. Strong operational, analytical, and cross-functional skills matter most. Payroll or payroll-tax depth is a plus, and we will invest in building it for the right person. Because the team is a daily resource for employees’ pay questions, a service mindset and clear communication matter as much as technical rigor.  

You will drive the following responsibilities:    

•Run and review end-to-end bi-weekly payroll, including data validation, reconciliation, and balancing  

•Analyze payroll reports to identify discrepancies, trends, and improvement opportunities  

•Work with internal teams and outsourced partners to resolve payroll and withholding issues  

•Support administration of complex compensation programs and coordinating with Finance, HR, Tax, and vendors  

•Be a responsive, service-minded resource for employee questions about pay, withholding, and multi-state wage allocation  

•Help build and roll out employee-facing pay communications, including standardized pay statements that supplement the W-2 and explain how different types of pay are allocated and taxed  

•Turn recurring questions into clearer documentation, FAQs, and self-service tools that reduce inquiry volume over time  

•Serve as a key resource for federal, state, and local payroll tax compliance, including interactions with tax agencies (notices, amendments, registrations, and filings)  

•Maintain expertise in multi-state payroll tax regulations, with demonstrated knowledge of New York and Connecticut withholding, reciprocity, and wage sourcing rules  

•Ensure accurate withholding, reporting, and remittance of payroll taxes across jurisdictions, including year-end activities such as W-2 review and quarter/year-end balancing  

•Contribute to the development, documentation, and maintenance of payroll tax procedures and controls  

•Manage state tax wage allocation for multi-jurisdictional employees, analyzing work location and residency scenarios to ensure compliant withholding and reporting  

•Partner with the Director to design the future-state payroll operating model, including building an enhanced in-house capability  

•Actively drive process reengineering: mapping workflows, removing manual steps, and redesigning around scalable technology  

•Help shape and execute the payroll technology roadmap with the Technology team, including automation and reporting  

•Build documentation and controls that reduce key-person dependency and support a leaner operating model  

•Support system enhancements, internal audits, and compliance reviews  

•Act as a fully cross-trained partner to the Director, Payroll, stepping in to keep payroll running without interruption  

•Collaborate across Tax, Technology, HR, Treasury, Accounting, and the business to operationalize new compensation programs, surface risks, and drive shared improvements  

•Serve as an escalation point for complex payroll and withholding matters, coordinating stakeholders to resolution  

The anticipated onsite requirement for this role is 4 days per week at our Westport, CT campus.   

Minimum Qualifications

•Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, HR, Business, or a related field

•5+ years in operations, HR, finance operations, or a related function

•Demonstrated experience improving processes and ideally leading change or transformation efforts  

•Strong analytical skills and advanced Excel, comfortable working with large data sets and complex scenarios  

•Strong communication and the ability to collaborate and build trust across teams and partners  

•A service mindset and the ability to explain complex pay and tax topics clearly to non-specialists  

•High ownership, integrity, discretion, and attention to detail  

•Payroll or payroll-tax experience, or exposure to multi-state payroll compliance  

•Familiarity with New York and Connecticut withholding  

•Experience with ADP, Workday, or similar platforms  

•Experience with executive or complex compensation  

•Experience with process automation  

About Bridgewater

Bridgewater Associates is a global macro investment firm, founded in 1975, whose mission is to develop a fundamental, cause-and-effect understanding of how markets and economies work—and translate that understanding into insights, returns, and solutions that help the world’s leading institutional investors solve their most important investment challenges. 

Over five decades, we have codified our fundamental understanding into a systematic investment process—integrating human judgment with machine intelligence with the goal of applying our thinking consistently, testing it against reality, and continuously improving decision-making over time. We believe this has created a unique platform for applying AI within our process, positioning us at the frontier of integrating technology with investment decision-making. 

In financial markets—where reality is constantly evolving and outcomes are uncertain—sustained excellence requires continuous learning and improvement. Our culture—anchored in radical truth and transparency—helps us learn faster. 

Find on our website .

Our Culture

Bridgewater’s culture is anchored in the pursuit of excellence—tied directly to our mission. In financial markets, where the base case is failure and reality is constantly evolving, winning requires continuous learning and improvement. Truth is our most essential tool for improvement, and transparency helps us get closer to truth because it places many eyes on our decisions, problems, and mistakes. By understanding reality clearly, we can identify the gap between where we are and where we want to be—and use that knowledge to learn and get better. Our system that supports this way of being is an idea meritocracy, where we commit to finding and rewarding the best ideas regardless of hierarchy.

Operating in these ways is hard. Finding truth and learning through it is inherently a high-friction cycle. It’s possible because we share a few core values: a commitment to honesty, high ownership, deeply meaningful work and relationships, and building Bridgewater as a big tent where vast differences are welcomed. These values create the common denominator that binds us together in good times and bad.

Benefits

One of our core priorities at Bridgewater is to enable our employees to build a great life and career, and we believe our benefits are an important extension of that philosophy. As such, currently Bridgewater offers a competitive suite of benefits, including health insurance, retirement benefits, paid leave, and other fringe benefits. Find more information about Bridgewater’s benefits on our website .

Bridgewater reserves the right to change its current benefits program at any time, in a manner that is consistent with applicable federal and state regulations.   

Sponsorship

Please note that we do not provide immigration sponsorship for this position.  

Compensation

The wage range for this role is $165,000-$250,000 inclusive of base salary and discretionary target bonus. The expected base salary for this role is between 80% - 90% of this wage range.   

This job description is not a contract and confers no contractual rights, privileges, or benefits on any applicant or potential applicant. Bridgewater has the right to change any and all terms of this job description, including, but not limited to, job responsibilities, qualifications and benefits. Nothing in this job description constitutes an offer or guarantee of employment.

Bridgewater Associates, LP is an Equal Opportunity Employer  