Operations
Chief of Staff
Founders’ office · operations · special projects
- Location
- Los Altos or remote
- Type
- Full-time · early core role
- Experience
- 5+ years
- Compensation
- Negotiable, set against your experience
A hardware company going into production has more critical paths than it has people to run them. This role is how the founders scale: you see everything, and you take whatever is most in the way.
It is not a scheduling job. Expect to run a fundraise workstream one month and a launch readiness review the next, and to hand each one off cleanly once it has a permanent owner.
What you’ll do
- Run the company’s operating rhythm: goals, weekly reviews, board and investor reporting, and the follow-through that makes them mean something.
- Own cross-functional programmes end to end — launch readiness, hiring plans, vendor and partner negotiations, fundraise materials and diligence.
- Hold the two halves of the company together across a fifteen-hour time difference, so a decision made in Los Altos is understood in Shenzhen and the reverse.
- Prepare the founders for what is next: briefs, decision memos, and the research behind them.
- Stand up the early back office — recruiting process, contracts, tooling, vendors — well enough that it can be handed to a specialist later.
- Take on whatever is most in the way, and hand it off once it has an owner.
What we’re looking for
- 5+ years across startup operations, a founders’ office, consulting, banking or venture — or you have started something of your own.
- You can turn a messy discussion into a one-page memo people act on. Writing is most of this job.
- Comfortable with numbers: a model, a BOM cost roll-up, a hiring plan, a burn forecast.
- Genuinely organised, and able to hold twenty threads without dropping one.
- Judgement about what matters — half the work is deciding what not to do.
- Willing to travel to Shenzhen and to work across the time difference.
- Discretion. You will see everything.
Nice to have
- Consumer hardware, supply chain or manufacturing exposure.
- You have been through a seed or Series A raise from the company’s side.
- Recruiting experience — this role will hire before there is a recruiter.
- Mandarin. Not required; useful.
Terms
- Compensation negotiable, set against your experience.
- Meaningful equity as an early core member.
- Los Altos or remote, with travel to Shenzhen.
Apply
Send your CV to talent@waybox.ai
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