Chief of Staff

VVater • Austin, TX

10d • Onsite

About The Position

The Chief of Staff is the force multiplier to the Chairman & CEO. This role is a hands-on operating seat in a hardware manufacturing company that makes physical products in a physical factory and ships them to physical customers. The Chief of Staff will spend time on the shop floor as often as in the boardroom, jumping into various departments like sales, marketing, finance, engineering, and HR when needed. This role is about fixing broken processes and executing tactical plans with significant ambiguity and often little oversight. It is an operator's seat, a builder's role, AI-native, cross-functional, and a confidential information broker. The path from this seat leads to C-suite roles as VVater scales.

Requirements

• 7+ years of operating experience in a hardware, manufacturing, defense, energy, aerospace, automotive, water, or similarly physical-product industry
• 7+ years of stakeholder management, investor relations, fundraising, listed or private.
• Demonstrated track record of building things, internal tools, systems, processes, products, or businesses. You ship.
• Hands-on fluency with modern AI tools (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Lovable, Replit, v0, Bolt, Zapier MCP, n8n, or equivalents). You can vibe-code a working internal application in an afternoon.
• Cross-functional fluency, you have worked across at least three of: operations, manufacturing, supply chain, sales, marketing, finance, engineering, HR
• Strong technical and operational instincts, you can read a P&L, evaluate a BOM, sit in on an engineering review, and walk a shop floor with credibility
• Exceptional written and verbal communication; you can draft an investor letter, a board memo, and a customer email with equal clarity
• Project management discipline, you finish what you start, and you make sure others do too
• Comfort with ambiguity, you do not need a job description to know what to do next
• Bachelor's degree in engineering, a STEM field, or equivalent practical experience.

Nice To Haves

• Assessment tests are required as part of our recruitment process.

Responsibilities

• Own the rhythm of how the company runs at the executive level, leadership meetings, planning cycles, all-hands, board prep
• Set agendas, drive meeting discipline, capture decisions, assign owners, and follow up until items are closed
• Maintain a real-time view of the CEO's top priorities and ensure his time is allocated against them
• Triage information into and out of the CEO's office, surface what matters, filter what does not
• Step into sales when a deal needs senior coordination, RFP responses, customer escalations, and contract negotiations
• Step into marketing when a launch, campaign, or PR moment needs executive-level coordination
• Step into operations and the factory floor when production, supply chain, or facilities issues need cross-functional unblocking
• Step into finance when cash flow, financing rounds, or vendor negotiations need executive involvement
• Step into HR when sensitive personnel issues, hiring decisions, or organizational design questions arise
• Step into engineering when project coordination, technical reviews, or customer technical escalations need a senior point of contact
• Build and document VVater's operating system, SOPs, policies, escalation paths, and decision frameworks
• Identify process gaps and design lightweight, scalable solutions that do not create bureaucracy
• Partner with functional leaders to standardize how VVater plans, reports, and executes
• Own internal tooling decisions in coordination with IT and operations, CRM, ERP, project management, and communication platforms
• Build internal tools, dashboards, automations, and AI agent workflows that multiply executive output
• Vibe-code prototypes and working internal applications, when a problem can be solved faster with a Friday-afternoon build than a six-week vendor procurement
• Deploy AI agents to automate reporting, document drafting, research, customer outreach, and routine operations wherever it makes sense
• Stay at the bleeding edge of AI tooling and bring the best of it into VVater's stack
• Serve as primary thought partner to the CEO on strategy, operations, capital allocation, and people decisions
• Prepare decision briefs and synthesized recommendations on complex cross-functional issues
• Pressure-test the CEO's thinking before key decisions; play devil's advocate when the moment calls for it
• Translate the CEO's vision and priorities into clear, actionable plans for the executive team
• Draft executive communications, internal updates, board memos, investor letters, and key external correspondence
• Attend meetings on behalf of the CEO; debrief with clear summaries and recommended actions
• Maintain relationships with key external stakeholders, investors, lenders, legal counsel, and strategic partners, at the CEO's direction
• Manage confidential and sensitive information with absolute discretion
• Take ownership of high-priority initiatives that do not yet have a functional home
• Lead investigations into new business opportunities, partnerships, or strategic pivots
• Stand up new functions or workstreams from scratch until they are mature enough to hand off
• Be the catch-all for anything important that is falling through the cracks

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive