Retirement plans run on deadlines that do not move: contribution limits, compliance filings, enrollment windows. A Retirement Plan Administrator exists to make sure none of those dates slip, and the consequences of missing one are not abstract, since they can mean penalties or lost employer contributions for real employees. This is a full-time, fully remote role open to candidates anywhere, paying $69,000 a year within a Payroll and Benefits Administration function.
This particular seat sits on a small, growing benefits team, which means the role extends slightly beyond pure plan administration into supporting the team's own hiring as it scales. That combination is unusual on paper but common in practice for benefits teams below a certain size, where one person reasonably owns more than one function. Candidates coming from a pure plan administration background should not be put off by that; the recruiting portion is learnable, and most of the same organizational instincts apply to both halves of the job.
The core of the job is plan administration: keeping records accurate, staying ahead of compliance deadlines, and being the point of contact when a participant or a vendor has a question that needs an authoritative answer. Alongside that, this role also supports hiring for the growing team it sits within.
In a given month, that might mean reconciling a batch of contribution records against payroll data in the morning, then interviewing a candidate for an open benefits coordinator role in the afternoon. The range is real, and candidates should expect to move between the two without much friction. A recent quarter-end close, for instance, required cross-checking employer match contributions against three separate payroll cycles before a filing deadline, while two new coordinator roles were being actively sourced in parallel. Both got done on time.
A bachelor's degree in human resources, business administration, or psychology is the baseline. You will need two years of hands-on experience in benefits, retirement plan administration, or a closely related HR function, ideally including direct work with an applicant tracking system. SHRM-CP or PHR certification is often preferred, though a strong track record can offset its absence.
Confidence in handling sensitive information matters here. Retirement account details, salary data, and personal candidate information all pass through this role, and treating that responsibly is non-negotiable.
The strongest applicants tend to be people who already enjoy the unglamorous parts of administrative work: reconciling numbers, tracking down a missing form, following up a third time on a request that should have taken one email. If that kind of persistence sounds tedious rather than satisfying, this particular role probably is not the right fit, regardless of how strong the resume looks otherwise.
Nice to have, not required: prior exposure to retirement plan recordkeeping systems, and any background in payroll processing. Someone who has worked adjacent to finance or accounting, even briefly, usually picks up the compliance side of this role faster than someone coming purely from a generalist HR background. Familiarity with plan documents and summary plan descriptions is a bonus but not expected on day one; that level of detail is usually taught in the first month or two.
The base salary is $69,000, and the full-time benefits package includes health coverage, paid time off, and retirement plan matching. Performance-based hiring bonuses apply as well, tied specifically to the recruiting portion of this role rather than the plan administration side.
Remoteroles positions roles like this one under Payroll and Benefits Administration because the two functions genuinely overlap at growing companies, and candidates searching purely for a plan administration role should know upfront that hiring support is part of the mandate here, not a footnote.
There is no city or office tied to this position. Plan administration work tends to be schedule-flexible outside of hard compliance deadlines, while candidate interviews require a few hours of coordinated overlap with hiring managers each week. Most communication runs through Slack and the ATS, with video calls reserved for interviews and periodic check-ins on plan compliance status. Deadlines around filings and enrollment periods are fixed regardless of time zone, so planning ahead around those dates matters more than working any particular set of hours. Outside of those fixed points, this is a role where you largely manage your own calendar, provided the compliance work gets done and interview slots get covered.
Submit a resume that speaks to both sides of this role: your plan administration or benefits background, and any hands-on recruiting experience you bring. Candidates who move forward can expect an initial screening call, followed by a conversation focused specifically on how you would handle a compliance deadline colliding with an active hiring search. Offers typically follow within two to three weeks of a final interview.
Reach out even if your background leans heavily toward one side of the role and not the other. A candidate strong in plan administration but new to recruiting, or the reverse, is still worth a conversation, since the ramp-up on either half is manageable with the right foundation already in place. Questions about how the two halves of the role are actually weighted week to week are fair to ask before applying, and the hiring team is happy to walk through it in detail on that first call.