Tesseon is an embedded Paycor partner delivering managed payroll, HR, and workforce services. Our certified payroll practice is different from the software-only tools in the market: where other competitors hand the client a platform and expect the client's own staff to maintain wage determinations, classification libraries, and fringe reconciliation, our team performs that compliance work on the client's behalf. For a contractor running multiple simultaneous public-works jobs across several trades and unions, that difference is measured in headcount and risk, not convenience.

Day to day, that work happens in our own Certified Payroll Center, the system Tesseon built to run this practice, from the wage-determination and classification library through the federal and state filings themselves. As we onboard more clients, our developer adds new states and report forms to it.

This is a customer service role first. You will be the voice our certified payroll clients know — the person they call when a general contractor rejects a report, an agency portal kicks back a submission, or they simply don't understand what a wage determination is asking of them. You will spend a real part of every day on the phone and on email with contractors, office managers, and project staff, and you will leave each of them clearer and calmer than when they called. If you don't like talking to people or helping them over the phone, this role isn't for you.

Behind that service is hands-on production and compliance work. You will own the weekly certified payroll cycle for a book of government contractors and public-works employers on prevailing wage projects — mapping wage determinations, valuing fringe, validating inputs before payroll runs, and producing filing-ready WH-347s and state-equivalent reports with Statements of Compliance. You are the person who knows why an apprentice's ratio broke, why a rate didn't update after a wage determination modification, and what a report needs to look like before a client's officer is willing to sign it.

•      Be the first call for your clients: answer their phone calls and emails, and see each question through to resolution

•      Walk clients through their reports in plain language — what a rate is based on and why a fringe amount came out the way it did

•      Help clients understand and fix what led to a general contractor or agency rejection, and stay with them until the resubmission is accepted

•      Run recurring client check-ins on open items, data gaps, and upcoming project starts

•      Confirm with the client which of their people worked on each project before a report is produced

•      Know what we can and cannot answer: we do not interpret any contracts, including union agreements and project contracts, and we do not decide whether prevailing wage applies to a project or give legal or tax advice — those questions go back to the client and its attorney

•      Cross-reference project locations and job titles against the prevailing wage determinations the client supplies; maintain each client's rate and classification library and apply modifications as clients provide them or as our own monitoring flags them

•      Calculate the monetary value of required fringe benefits (healthcare, retirement, training, vacation), including fringe credits and cash-in-lieu amounts

•      Collect and review the client's hours, typically from their own spreadsheet and occasionally from a Paycor Workforce Management integration; apply craft classification assignments, including split-classification weeks

•      Run reasonableness checks of client-supplied inputs against the classification library, rate table, and prior-period data — flagging inconsistencies and anomalies before payroll processes

•      Check apprentice classifications, program/trade/level data, and journeyman ratios for internal consistency

•      Generate certified payroll reports in federal Form WH-347 and required state and agency formats, and deliver filing-ready packages within two business days of receiving complete data

•      Prepare the Statement of Compliance for signature by the client's authorized officer (Tesseon does not sign or certify — federal rules reserve that for an officer or employee of the contractor who supervises the payment of wages)

•      On a Missouri public job, prepare the one-time PW-4 Affidavit of Compliance for the client's signature and notarization once the job is complete, separate from the weekly LS-57

•      Maintain the report archive per the retention terms in each client agreement

•      Build job/project mapping and classification libraries for new clients during implementation, including setting up how hours will actually reach us for each project, typically the client's own spreadsheet

•      A genuine service mindset: you enjoy talking with people, you're comfortable on the phone throughout the day, and you stay patient and clear when a client is frustrated or confused

•      The ability to explain technical compliance rules to a contractor's office manager without jargon

•      5+ years of hands-on certified payroll / prevailing wage compliance experience, preferably for a contractor, a construction payroll service bureau, or a multi-client CPA or PEO practice

•      Working command of Davis-Bacon and Related Acts, Form WH-347, wage determinations and modifications, fringe benefit valuation, and apprentice ratio requirements

•      Familiarity with at least one certified payroll reporting platform — LCPtracker, Points North, eMars, Elation, or comparable — as a signal of domain fluency

•      Experience running certified payroll for multiple simultaneous projects with multiple crafts and split classifications

•      Full-cycle payroll fundamentals: multi-state, multi-jurisdiction, garnishments, taxes

•      A clear understanding of what we can and cannot answer for a client, and the discipline to hold that line when a client pushes for an answer

•      Precision under a weekly deadline, and the judgment to spot a wrong number before a client certifies it

•      Experience in a client-facing payroll or service bureau role where you owned a book of clients

•      St. Louis metro, with working knowledge of the Missouri Prevailing Wage Law and the Illinois Prevailing Wage Act

•      General Paycor familiarity is a plus; Workforce Management and job costing experience is not essential

•      Union and CBA payroll exposure — fringe reporting, multiple locals, trust remittances

•      Additional state programs (California DIR/DAS-140/142, New York, Washington)

•      Experience supporting clients through a DOL or state agency audit

•      The compliance work is the product here, not an afterthought bolted onto a payroll run — your expertise, and the way you deliver it to clients, is what they are buying

•      Ground-floor ownership of a growing practice, with real influence over how the service and its tooling are built

•      A path to management: as the certified payroll department grows, this role has the potential to grow into leading the team

•      A defined scope with clear boundaries, documented in every client agreement — you are not the signer of record and not the filer of record

•      30 days: fluent in the Certified Payroll Center and how Paycor and client data feed it; shadowing client calls and weekly cycles, then running weekly cycles for an existing book

•      60 days: owning your own clients end to end, including taking their calls and leading client-facing review calls

•      90 days: leading onboarding for a new client — job/project mapping, classification library build, and first certified reports delivered clean

$35.00 per hour, with overtime at 1.5x for hours over 40 in a workweek. Benefits begin after a 90-day introductory period and include a 401(k) with employer match; partially employer-paid medical, dental, life, and disability coverage; voluntary vision; and paid vacation, sick leave, and holidays. Tesseon is an equal opportunity employer.