Payroll Specialist

About the role:

We’re hiring our first Payroll Specialist to help build and scale payroll onboarding and support at Arketa. This is a unique opportunity to join at the ground floor of a new product area and play a critical role in shaping the customer experience from day one. You’ll work across onboarding, implementation, and ongoing support, helping customers successfully adopt payroll while navigating the complexity that comes with a fast-moving, early-stage environment. This role is ideal for someone with strong payroll expertise who enjoys solving messy problems, building processes as they go, and creating a better experience for customers over time.

What You'll Do:

Customer Onboarding

• Guide customers through the setup and onboarding of Arketa Payroll.
• Help customers collect and enter payroll, tax, banking, and employee information.
• Support customers migrating from another payroll provider.
• Ensure customers are prepared to successfully run their first payroll.
• Coordinate with our payroll partner and internal teams to resolve onboarding issues.

Customer Support

• Answer customer questions related to payroll, taxes, employee setup, deductions, direct deposit, and payroll processing.
• Troubleshoot product and payroll issues through email, chat, and video calls when needed.
• Own customer issues from initial contact through resolution.
• Escalate complex payroll or technical issues to the appropriate internal teams or Check.
• Clearly explain payroll concepts in language customers can understand.

Continuous Improvement

• Identify recurring customer pain points and recommend improvements.
• Help create Help Center articles, internal documentation, and support playbooks.
• Share customer feedback with Product and Engineering to improve the payroll experience.
• Continue building your payroll knowledge and stay current on product enhancements.

What success looks like:

Within your first year, you will:

• Successfully onboard customers to Arketa Payroll and help them complete their first payroll with confidence.
• Deliver a high-quality support experience with timely, accurate responses.
• Become a trusted payroll resource for both customers and internal teams.
• Identify opportunities to improve onboarding, support processes, and the overall customer experience.
• Contribute to building a scalable payroll support function as Arketa grows.

What we're looking for:

• 2+ years of experience supporting payroll, HR, accounting, or SaaS customers.
• Experience working with payroll software such as Gusto, Paychex, ADP, Rippling, Homebase, QuickBooks Payroll, or similar platforms is preferred.
• Knowledge of payroll fundamentals, including employee setup, payroll schedules, taxes, deductions, and year-end forms.
• Strong customer service and communication skills.
• Excellent attention to detail and organizational skills.
• Ability to manage multiple customer conversations and priorities simultaneously.
• Comfortable learning new technology and working across multiple systems.
• Curious, proactive, and eager to continuously learn.

Bonus:

• Experience onboarding customers to SaaS products.
• Experience supporting small businesses.
• Experience using Intercom, HubSpot, or similar customer support platforms.

You Should Apply If

• Being the first payroll specialist at a company excites you.
• Exposure to a hybrid role that blends implementation, onboarding, and support rather than staying in a narrow lane is the variety you like.
• Building processes and preventing issues and how payroll is delivered sound like mighty but thrilling tasks, or perhaps you've done it before.
• You're mission-driven and excited about wellness becoming more accessible.

You May Not Want to Apply If

• You're looking for a role with established playbooks and clearly defined processes (you'll be building many of them here).
• You want a slower pace or a more established later-stage environment.
• Ambiguity frustrates you.
• You want to stay in purely implementation or purely support.

What We Offer:

• Ownership and Opportunity for Advancement.
• Competitive Salary and Stock Options.
• Unlimited PTO: our policy is designed to give you the flexibility to rest, recharge, and take care of personal needs — while staying aligned with your team and responsibilities.
• Medical, dental and vision health insurance.
• Fitness Class Reimbursement: we’re committed to supporting both employee wellness and our industry relationships. As an Arketa employee we see movement as opportunity.
• Parental Leave Policy.