Freelance Pattern Making Jobs in Boston, MA (NOW HIRING)

MUST BE WITHIN THE UNITED STATES TO BE CONSIDERED

ABOUT ZEN DEN

Zen Den is a boutique fractional HR firm for cannabis and adjacent industries. We embed directly with dispensaries, cultivators, processors, and plant-touching businesses and we do the real work alongside them. Every client knows us by name. That is the whole model.

Cannabis operators are running lean teams in a high-scrutiny environment with turnover that runs between 40 and 60 percent annually, state labor departments that actively target this industry, and HR needs that generic consultants have never had to navigate. We exist because those operators deserve real HR support built specifically for how they operate, and the people inside their businesses deserve someone who actually gives a damn about them.

We lead with understanding first and make decisions from there. We treat our clients' employees like our own community. We believe the strongest workplaces are built by people who are willing to do the hard work, have the honest conversations, and stay invested in the outcome. That is who we are and it is who we are looking for.

THE ROLE

You will own HR for a portfolio of cannabis industry clients. That means serving as their primary HR contact, handling the full range of what comes up in a growing cannabis business, and being someone employees and managers can trust to show up prepared, stay calm, and do the right thing.

This role requires someone who can operate with real autonomy. You will manage competing priorities across multiple accounts, make judgment calls, and handle complex situations without needing to escalate everything. You are expected to come in with a strong foundation and grow it here. The expectation is that you can carry your own client load and do this work at a high level.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Employee Relations

• Handle terminations, PIPs, disciplinary conversations, and workplace investigations from start to finish
• Coach managers through difficult situations and hold them accountable to doing it right
• Lead with understanding in every employee interaction before making any decisions
• Document properly because the work actually happened, not as a paper trail after the fact
• Protect the business and the employees inside it at the same time

Recruiting + Hiring

• Manage full-cycle recruiting across client accounts: job descriptions, postings, screening, interviews, offers
• Own hiring the way it should be owned, inside HR, not outsourced to a recruiter
• Build pipelines for roles that come up repeatedly across accounts

Payroll

• Process and manage payroll for client accounts
• Run labor reports, track labor to sales ratios, and flag anything that looks off
• Understand the numbers well enough to advise clients on what they mean
• Troubleshoot issues and own them to resolution
• Gusto and ISolved required. KayaPush a strong plus.

Benefits

• Support benefits enrollment, vendor coordination, and employee questions across accounts
• Deep benefits experience is a plus but not required

Training and Development

• Build and facilitate trainings across client accounts as needs come up: new manager training, harassment prevention, onboarding programs, culture and communication work
• Make it practical and relevant to the people in the room, not generic

HR Operations and Documentation

• Keep handbooks, policies, offer letters, and SOPs current and useful across accounts
• Conduct HR audits across client accounts and identify gaps before they become problems
• Manage I-9 compliance, employee files, and documentation standards
• Review and update job descriptions, disciplinary forms, and onboarding materials
• Stay current on state-specific employment law and make sure client documentation reflects it
• Built for the actual business, plain language, not pulled from a template

Strategy and Advisory

• Serve as a true thought partner to business owners on people decisions, org design, comp, and culture
• Identify trends inside client accounts - turnover patterns, manager issues, morale signals - and bring solutions, not just observations
• Help clients think through headcount decisions, role design, and team structure as they grow
• Advise on performance management, retention strategy, and how to build a workplace people want to stay in
• Be the person who tells leadership the truth, not what they want to hear
• Show up to client calls prepared, invested, and ready to move things forward

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

Multi-client or freelance experience is the first thing we look at. You need to have managed multiple clients or employers at the same time - the ability to context-switch, hold competing priorities, and show up fully for more than one business at once. We can teach cannabis. We cannot teach how to run a book of business.

We prefer people who came to HR from somewhere else first. A background in operations, healthcare, hospitality, the military, or another field before moving into HR tends to produce the kind of grounded, practical people professional we are looking for.

• 4 or more years of HR experience, with strong preference for those who worked in other industries or roles first
• You have had hard conversations with employees and managers and you did not flinch or hand it off
• Self-directed, organized, and flexible. You figure things out.
• You like people. Not as a resume line. You just do.
• You approach this work as something you do for people, not to them
• Cannabis experience is a meaningful plus. Real curiosity about the industry is required.

Tools: Monday.com, Slack, Claude, Canva, G Suite, QuickBooks, Gusto