Embedded Payroll Program Manager

About Arketa: Arketa is building the operating system for modern fitness and wellness. Their mission is to make wellness more accessible by empowering studios and wellness entrepreneurs to grow beyond in-person classes. They provide a powerful, all-in-one platform to manage and scale hybrid wellness businesses, whether online, in-person, or both.

With Arketa, studios can manage schedules, accept bookings and payments, build on-demand video libraries, host retreats, run automated marketing, and launch fully branded apps and websites. They make it simple for founders to deliver a seamless, professional experience across every customer touchpoint. Arketa has raised $15M in Series A funding and is growing quickly.

About the Role

Arketa is seeking an Embedded Payroll Program Manager to own the strategy, process design, and success metrics behind their new embedded payroll offering. This role will also serve as a direct point of support for their partners. The day-to-day onboarding and support execution will be handled by the Implementation Account Manager and Payroll Specialist, but this manager will stay personally connected to partners, especially on complex or high-touch relationships.

Key responsibilities include designing playbooks for the team to execute, managing the relationship with their payroll infrastructure partner, and overseeing the Implementation Account Manager and Payroll Specialist.

Program Strategy & Process Design

• Design the onboarding playbook, support triage process, and escalation paths in partnership with the Implementation Account Manager and Payroll Specialist.
• Define handoff criteria between onboarding and ongoing support, refining it as the team grows.
• Build the documentation and Help Center foundations for the rest of the team to execute against.
• Own the roadmap and priorities for the payroll offering's customer-facing operations.

Metrics & Reporting

• Define and track key metrics such as time-to-launch, onboarding capacity, support resolution time, support volume per customer, CSAT, and documentation coverage.
• Own the reporting cadence to leadership on the operational performance of the payroll offering.

Partner Support

• Serve as a senior point of contact for Arketa's payroll partners, especially on complex, escalated, or strategic relationships.
• Step in directly on partner issues requiring program-level context or cross-functional pull.
• Build direct partner relationships to inform the evolution of onboarding and support processes.

Team & Stakeholder Management

• Manage and coach the Implementation Account Manager and Payroll Specialist, unblocking escalations they can't resolve independently.
• Manage the relationship with the payroll provider and coordinate with engineering, compliance, and customer success to keep implementations and support on track.
• Translate recurring customer pain points into feedback for Product and Engineering.

What Success Looks Like

• New customers launch on time with minimal friction, and support questions are resolved quickly and accurately.
• Clear documentation exists for both onboarding and support workflows.
• Partners feel a direct, senior point of contact is available for their complex or high-stakes needs.
• The Implementation Account Manager and Payroll Specialist have what they need to execute independently, with the manager focused on strategy, metrics, partner relationships, and escalations.
• A well-reasoned, evolving plan for how the onboarding/support handoff should work as volume grows.

What We're Looking For

• 3-5+ years in program/project management, implementation, or customer-facing operations leadership, ideally at a fintech, HR tech, or payroll company.
• Experience designing processes and playbooks for a customer-facing function, ideally from scratch.
• People management experience, or strong readiness to manage a small team, preferred.
• Strong communication skills to explain payroll mechanics to non-experts and translate customer pain points to internal teams.
• Ability to operate with ambiguity; this role and its scope will evolve.
• Experience with payroll, benefits, or embedded financial products is a strong plus.