Chief of Staff to the CEO | Venture-Backed AI Startup $170k + equity

A fast-growing, venture-backed AI startup is hiring a Chief of Staff to work directly alongside its founder and CEO.

The company is building AI-powered software for a large, established industry that remains significantly underserved by modern technology. The business is early-stage, well funded and gaining strong commercial traction.

The team is small, ambitious and moving quickly. This is an opportunity to join near the beginning and play a central role in building the company’s commercial and operating foundations.

The Role

This is not a traditional administrative Chief of Staff position.

You will operate as a high-impact generalist across customer growth, partnerships, onboarding, go-to-market strategy and critical business initiatives.

Your role will be to extend the CEO’s capacity, take ownership of high-priority projects and help turn company strategy into execution.

One day you may be supporting a major customer conversation. The next, you could be improving onboarding, building a partnership, testing a new growth channel or solving an operational issue affecting the wider business.

As the company grows, this role has the potential to evolve into a senior leadership position across go-to-market, customer success, commercial operations, partnerships or business operations.

What You Will Do

Commercial Growth

Support pre-sales and post-sales conversations with prospective and existing customers.

Build strong relationships with customers ranging from smaller businesses to major enterprise organisations.

Help shape commercial strategy, customer messaging and new growth initiatives.

Represent the company in customer meetings, industry events and strategic discussions.

Customer Onboarding and Success

Build and improve customer onboarding processes.

Ensure customers are successfully implemented and begin seeing value quickly.

Identify risks, resolve issues and improve retention.

Create scalable customer success systems as the business grows.

Go-to-Market Strategy

Help manage and improve growth channels including outbound sales, partnerships, events, marketing and business development.

Analyse performance and identify where the company should invest time and resources.

Test new ideas, refine what works and build repeatable commercial processes.

Strategic Projects

Take ownership of high-priority projects from concept through to execution.

Develop partnerships that can accelerate revenue, distribution or customer growth.

Work across customers, investors, partners and internal teams to keep important initiatives moving.

CEO Support

Act as a trusted extension of the founder and CEO.

Bring structure to ambiguous problems and convert priorities into action.

Represent the CEO in selected customer, investor and partner discussions.

Help the CEO focus on the decisions and relationships where their involvement matters most.

What We Are Looking For

You will likely have several years of experience from one or more of the following environments:

• Top-tier strategy consulting
• Investment banking
• Private equity
• Business operations
• Strategy or commercial roles within a high-growth startup
• Chief of Staff, founder’s associate or generalist operating roles

Previous startup experience is essential.

You should also bring:

• Strong analytical and structured problem-solving ability
• Excellent written and verbal communication
• Confidence working directly with customers and senior stakeholders
• The ability to move comfortably between strategy and hands-on execution
• Strong commercial instincts
• High personal ownership
• The ability to operate without a detailed playbook
• A willingness to work on-site in San Francisco

A technical, quantitative or STEM-related academic background would be highly regarded.

Candidates must have appropriate US work authorisation.

Particularly Relevant Experience

Experience in any of the following areas would be valuable:

• Chief of Staff or business operations
• Customer success
• Enterprise sales or pre-sales
• Customer onboarding and implementation
• Go-to-market strategy
• Strategic partnerships
• Startup operations
• Launching new products, markets or commercial channels

The Person

This role will suit someone who is highly capable, commercially minded and unusually proactive.

You enjoy being close to customers, founders and important business decisions.

You are comfortable working through ambiguity, taking ownership and moving quickly without waiting for perfect information.

You care about outcomes, not titles or rigid job boundaries.

This is a demanding role with significant responsibility, but also an exceptional opportunity to learn quickly, work directly with experienced founders and earn a meaningful leadership position as the company grows.

Compensation

• Base salary of up to $170,000
• Meaningful early-stage equity
• Flexibility around the balance between salary and equity for the right candidate
• Health and retirement benefits
• Paid time off
• Direct exposure to the founders, investors and company-building process

Why Join?

This is an opportunity to join a well-funded AI company while the team is still small enough for one exceptional person to have a genuine impact.

You will help shape the company’s customers, commercial strategy, operating systems and next stage of growth.

For the right person, this is more than a Chief of Staff role. It is a pathway into becoming one of the company’s future leaders.

This is now much harder to reverse-search back to the client.

Chief of Staff to the CEO | Venture-Backed AI Startup

San Francisco | On-site

Up to $170,000 base meaningful equity

Early to mid-career opportunity