Chief of Staff to the CEO

Chief of Staff to the CEO San Mateo, CA Job Details Full-time $130,000 - $160,000 a year 19 hours ago Qualifications Startup experience Consulting experience Task prioritization Decision making Fundraising Senior level Cross-functional collaboration Project leadership Cross-functional team management 2 years Communication skills Project stakeholder communication Stakeholder relationship building Cross-functional communication Stakeholder management Full Job Description The Role We are looking for an exceptional individual to serve as Chief of Staff to the CEO in a high-impact, high-ownership role. This role is critical to the company: you will act as a force multiplier for the CEO, ensuring that priorities are clear, execution is tight, and nothing important falls through the cracks. You will operate at the center of the company, connecting product, research, operations, and external stakeholders, while driving forward the highest-leverage initiatives. This role requires strong judgment, high agency, and the ability to translate ambiguity into execution. You will help design and run the CEO's operating system: maintaining context across everything in flight, preparing for key decisions and meetings, and ensuring consistent follow-through across the organization. You should be comfortable flexing between strategy and execution, handling both high-level prioritization and detailed operational work with equal rigor. This is a high-growth role with significant visibility, direct exposure to leadership, and real ownership of outcomes. This role is in-person five days a week based in San Mateo, CA.

Responsibilities Executive leverage and prioritization:

Maintain a real-time understanding of company priorities, ensure the CEO is focused on the highest-leverage work, and proactively surface risks, tradeoffs, and opportunities.

Cross-functional execution:

Drive high-priority, cross-functional initiatives end-to-end, including coordinating across partnerships, research and engineering, and operations to ensure progress and alignment.

Special projects:

Lead ambiguous, high-impact projects (e.g., fundraising support, partnerships, internal initiatives) from zero to one, with full ownership of outcomes.

Systems and process building:

Develop lightweight systems, trackers, and workflows that improve visibility, accountability, and execution across the company.

Information filtering and triage:

Act as a central point for inbound information and requests; filter signal from noise, prioritize effectively, and ensure timely responses.

Meeting and stakeholder management:

Prepare the CEO for key meetings, track decisions, and execute on action items. Maintain context across key relationships, ensure thoughtful follow-ups, and support high-stakes communications. Minimum Qualifications 2-5 years of professional experience in a highly demanding, high-ownership environment, such as startups, technology companies, consulting, or venture capital, with a track record of delivering high-quality work on tight timelines. Experience driving cross-functional initiatives in one or more of: strategy & operations, business operations, product operations, program management, or founder/CEO support roles. Demonstrated ability to create clarity from ambiguity, prioritize effectively, and execute end-to-end with minimal oversight. Exceptional written and verbal communication skills; able to produce crisp, executive-ready materials and synthesize complex information clearly. Strong judgment and decision-making ability; able to identify what matters most and act accordingly. High agency and ownership mindset; consistently proactive with strong follow-through. Strong interpersonal skills and high responsiveness; able to build trust with senior stakeholders and operate effectively across teams. Comfort building simple systems (trackers, processes, cadences) and using them to drive execution and accountability. Excitement and energy to work in robotics and at the frontier of intelligence. Preferred Qualifications Prior experience working directly with a founder, CEO, or senior executive in a high-growth environment. Experience in AI/ML, robotics, or other technical/product-driven companies. Experience supporting or participating in fundraising, partnerships, or other high-stakes external processes. Familiarity with product development processes and the ability to translate strategic priorities into execution. Demonstrated ability to operate across both strategic and operational domains, with a bias toward action. What we offer Real ownership and real outcomes: You will operate at the center of the company and directly impact how the CEO and leadership team function and execute. High-trust, high-autonomy environment: We move quickly and expect strong judgment; you will have significant latitude to define priorities, systems, and approaches.

Direct exposure and visibility:

You will work closely with the CEO and senior leaders, with meaningful influence over company priorities and decisions. A rare mix of strategy and execution: This role spans prioritization, operations, communication, and execution—ideal if you enjoy both thinking and doing. Steep learning curve and career acceleration: You will develop deep skills in company building, executive decision-making, and operating at scale.

Room to build:

You will design and implement the systems and processes that become the company's operating backbone. Collaborative, mission-driven team: A world-class group that values rigor, ownership, and speed, and is deeply committed to building transformative technology. About Generalist At Generalist, we are on a mission to make general-purpose robots a reality. We believe the industries and homes of the future will depend on humans and machines working together in new ways. Robots can help us build more and get more done. We build embodied foundation models, starting with a focus on dexterity. This requires advancing the frontiers of data, models, and hardware, to enable robots to intelligently interact with the physical world. The company embraces both large-scale AI and robotics as core to its DNA. Our team of researchers, roboticists, and company builders come from OpenAI, Boston Dynamics, Google DeepMind, and other frontier labs—with a track record of shipping AI breakthroughs. Before Generalist, we pioneered large embodied multimodal models and vision-language-action models (PaLM-E, RT-2, Gemini Robotics), launched and scaled ChatGPT and GPT-4 to hundreds of millions of users, engineered the foundations of autonomous driving, built next-generation robots (Atlas, Spot, Stretch) and pushed the limits of what they can do (from parkour to manipulation, and testing robustness). We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

Compensation Range:

$130K - $160K