Title: Payroll Administrator
Location: Albany, MN
Job Type: Contract-to-Hire or Direct-Hire
Compensation: $25-30/hr
Industry: Construction and Manufacturing
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About the Role
Our staffing firm is partnering with a well-established construction and precast concrete manufacturing organization based in Albany, MN to identify a detail-oriented Payroll Administrator to join their corporate payroll team. Our client operates across multiple states, legal entities, union agreements, job sites, and manufacturing plants, supporting a workforce of 3,000+ employees. This is a control-sensitive payroll operations role where accuracy, urgency, documentation, and employee trust are critical every week. The position reports into the Corporate Payroll Manager and Director of Payroll Services and plays a key role in protecting the organization from payroll errors, compliance exposure, and job-costing defects.
Job Description
The Payroll Administrator will execute accurate, timely, and compliant payroll for a complex multi-state construction and manufacturing environment. This includes weekly payroll processing, timekeeping validation, union and certified payroll support, employee issue resolution, and post-payroll audit activities. The role requires strong ownership of the details, root-cause problem solving, and a no-surprises approach to communication with field, plant, HR, and finance partners.
Key Responsibilities:
- Payroll Processing & Weekly Execution: Process assigned payroll populations, locations, unions, entities, or workstreams in accordance with the payroll calendar and approval deadlines. Validate timecards, pay rates, earnings codes, deductions, taxes, union classifications, premium pay, PTO, retro adjustments, reimbursements, and per diems before processing. Review exception reports and resolve missing punches, late approvals, negative balances, unusual hours, duplicate payments, and coding inconsistencies. Prepare payroll batches, uploads, corrections, off-cycle requests, and adjustment documentation with proper support. Support payroll reconciliation, variance review, funding support, and GL/labor cost review after processing.
- Timekeeping, Labor Coding & Operational Discipline: Partner with supervisors, plant leaders, field leaders, HR, and operations to drive timely timecard approvals and clean labor coding. Ensure labor hours are coded correctly by employee, union, job, task, department, project, cost code, shift, and premium category to support accurate job-costing and margin reporting. Identify recurring late approvals, coding errors, missed punches, or location-specific training needs and escalate patterns to payroll leadership.
- Union, Certified Payroll & Prevailing Wage Support: Support union payroll requirements including wage rates, fringe calculations, dues, deductions, jurisdictional rules, benefit remittances, and CBA-specific provisions. Assist with certified payroll reporting, prevailing wage documentation, and project-specific payroll requirements. Maintain accurate records and supporting documentation for union audits, benefit audits, certified payroll reviews, workers compensation audits, and internal compliance reviews.
- Employee Service & Issue Resolution: Serve as a professional point of contact for employee and supervisor payroll questions, correction requests, pay-stub inquiries, deductions, garnishments, direct deposit, and wage-related issues. Resolve issues with urgency while maintaining approval discipline and documentation. Track recurring inquiry types and payroll defects so leadership can address training gaps, system setup issues, or process failures.
- Controls, Compliance & Audit Readiness: Follow documented payroll controls for master-data changes, pay-rate changes, deductions, garnishments, manual checks, off-cycle payments, union setup, bank changes, and payroll approvals. Maintain complete support for adjustments, corrections, reconciliations, and exceptions. Support monthly, quarterly, and annual activities including tax support, W-2 preparation, unemployment requests, garnishment administration, benefit deduction review, and year-end payroll cleanup. Help maintain SOPs, checklists, compliance calendars, and exception logs.
- Reporting, Continuous Improvement & Systems Support: Prepare routine payroll reports, exception summaries, aging issue logs, certified payroll support schedules, and payroll data requests for Finance, HR, Operations, and leadership. Assist with testing payroll system changes, new earning/deduction codes, union setup, timekeeping rules, tax updates, acquisition integration, and process automation. Recommend improvements that reduce manual work, repeated corrections, off-cycle payrolls, and spreadsheet dependency.
Operating Cadence:
- Daily during payroll processing: Review assigned timekeeping exceptions, missing approvals, coding issues, and payroll inbox/escalation items.
- Weekly: Complete payroll checklist, submit assigned payroll workstreams, document exceptions, support post-payroll review, and update issue logs.
- Monthly: Assist with reconciliations, union/certified payroll support, recurring issue analysis, SOP updates, and reporting requests.
- Quarterly/Annually: Support tax filings, W-2s, union audits, workers compensation audits, benefits review, and process-improvement initiatives.
Qualifications
Required Qualifications:
- 2+ years of payroll, timekeeping, HR operations, accounting, union administration, or related experience.
- Working knowledge of timekeeping systems, payroll systems, ERP interfaces, Excel, payroll reports, and basic reconciliation concepts.
- Ability to operate under weekly deadlines with high accuracy, strong follow-through, and professional communication.
- Demonstrated accuracy under deadline pressure, ownership of details, and a compliance-first mindset.
- Strong service orientation with the discipline to maintain approval controls, documentation, and policy consistency.
- Root-cause problem-solving skills — able to fix the immediate issue and help prevent the next occurrence.
- Comfortable working in a private-equity-backed environment where process discipline, measurable performance, controls, and continuous improvement are expected.
Preferred Qualifications:
- 5+ years of payroll experience for placement at the Specialist level.
- Experience supporting hourly, field, plant, construction, manufacturing, or distributed workforces.
- Multi-state payroll experience.
- Union payroll, certified payroll, prevailing wage, CBA, fringe benefit, or construction payroll experience.
- FPC, CPP, certified payroll training, payroll tax training, or equivalent payroll education.
- Experience assisting with SOP development, exception logs, and audit-readiness documentation.
- Prior involvement in payroll system testing, acquisition integration, or process automation efforts.
Benefits
Dahl Consulting is proud to offer a comprehensive benefits package to eligible employees that will allow you to choose the best coverage to meet your family’s needs. For details, please review the DAHL Benefits Summary: https://www.dahlconsulting.com/benefits-w2fta/.
How to Apply
Take the first step on your new career path!
To submit yourself for consideration for this role, simply click the apply button and complete our mobile-friendly online application. Once we’ve reviewed your application details, a recruiter will reach out to you with next steps!
Equal Opportunity Statement
As an equal opportunity employer, Dahl Consulting welcomes candidates of all backgrounds and experiences to apply. If this position sounds like the right opportunity for you, we encourage you to take the next step and connect with us. We look forward to meeting you!
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