Human Resources Assistant

Who we are: At Arkana Laboratories, everyone has an important role to fill. Come join us and be a part of a team dedicated to making life better for those who need it most.

This place is packed with super-smart people who do their best work together. We work hard every day to advance our understanding of disease and provide world-class care to our patients in hopes of leaving our corner of the world a little better than we found it. While we are committed to improving the lives of thousands of patients, we never lose sight of the realization that they are the reason we get to create change in our field.

Built on generosity, teamwork, and the freedom to try new things, we take great pride in our work. Great ideas come from everywhere in this company and we celebrate each success and failure for the opportunity it gives us to keep reaching. For more than twenty years after our founder, Dr. Patrick Walker, wrote his goals on the back of a napkin, our people, culture, and values have remained strong.

ABOUT THE ROLE

The HR Assistant is a critical role of Arkana’s lean, high-performing HR team. This role ensures that every employee touchpoint—from the moment someone accepts an offer to the day-to-day questions that come through the help desk—is handled with accuracy, warmth, and professionalism. Attention to detail and a genuine care for people’s experience are not nice-to-haves here; they are the job.

Everything we do at Arkana is grounded in three values: Pulling the Sled, Generosity, and Do Better, Try Harder. In this role, that means consistently doing the work that keeps the team moving, treating every person’s experience with genuine care, and having the confidence to try new approaches—knowing that learning from what doesn’t work is just as valuable as getting it right the first time.

Being in HR means people trust you with things they would not share with anyone else. That trust is something this team takes seriously and works hard to earn every day. Part of honoring it means keeping sensitive information—employee records, compensation, and personnel matters—within the appropriate channels, always. The right candidate does not need to be reminded of this. They already understand that discretion is a form of respect.

This position is not new and is a result of an HR team promotion.

CORE RESPONSIBILITIES

HRIS & Employee Records – 30% (Core)

Maintain accurate employee data in the HRIS; process status changes including new hires, terminations, promotions, and transfers; ensure electronic files are complete, compliant, and consistently structured.

Onboarding Coordination – 25% (Core)

Support the full post-offer onboarding experience—coordinating with internal stakeholders, preparing materials, and ensuring new hires are informed and set up for success before and on their start date.

ZenDesk Administration – 20% (Core)

Serve as ground-control for the HR help desk (ZenDesk) queue: triage and route incoming tickets, ensure timely resolution, and partner with IT to build forms and workflows that reduce manual intake.

SharePoint & Content Management – 10%

Maintain HR and leadership intranet pages, post timely updates and announcements, and ensure employees can easily self-serve common information needs.

Admin & Meeting Support – 10%

Coordinate 90-day new-hire lunches with the CPO, manage expense reporting, provide meeting logistics support, create, modify and terminate employee security badges and serve as backup across the HR team as needed.

Payroll Support – 5%

Participate in a shared payroll rotation, providing backup support for payroll preparation and auditing. This role is not the primary payroll owner but is expected to be capable of stepping in when needed.

WHO YOU ARE

The right person for this role brings more than a matching resume. They bring a particular way of working and thinking that makes the entire HR team more effective—and they naturally embody the values Arkana is built on.

Pulling the Sled

• Proactively reliable – You follow through without being chased, flag and raise issues before they escalate, and show up consistently—not just when it’s convenient
• Calm under complexity – HR work is rarely one thing at a time. Payroll is due, a new hire starts on Monday, and the ticket queue is full. You manage competing demands without letting quality slip

Generosity

• People-first mindset – Behind every ticket, record, and onboarding checklist is a real person. You see the human in the administrative task and treat every interaction as part of someone’s experience at Arkana
• Disc