Client Operations Lead

Surreal • San Francisco, CA

18d • Hybrid

About The Position

About Us Surreal is an early-stage startup at the intersection of AI, social media, and brand protection. We help top-tier clients protect their digital likeness from harmful deepfakes, impersonation, and emerging AI-driven threats and explore how they can leverage AI to scale their impact. Our clients are household names with complex needs, fast-moving teams, and high expectations for proactive, high-touch support. The Role We’re looking for a Client Operations Lead to join our small, fast-moving team. This person will be the connective tissue across Client Operations, Product, and Business Development, serving as a client-facing partner while also rolling up their sleeves to drive operational excellence behind the scenes. This is a high-trust role requiring exceptional judgment, discretion, and communication skills. If you’ve excelled in client-facing roles (CSM, engagement manager, consulting, or similar), can navigate ambiguity, and love building processes from the ground up, this is an opportunity to shape the foundation of a category-defining company.

Requirements

• Experience in a client-facing role at a startup or in consulting, client success, partnerships, talent/entertainment, or similar.
• Excellent communicator, comfortable managing senior stakeholders with professionalism, tact, and discretion.
• Strong operational instincts - you can take complex processes and simplify them.
• Adept at using Airtable or other data management tools to structure work and produce reliable reporting.
• You’re able to embrace an early start-up environment by thriving in ambiguity and enjoying problem-solving without perfect context or direction.
• Willing to roll up your sleeves, from building dashboards to drafting client emails to analyzing social content.
• Comfortable with technical concepts, eager to experiment with AI tools, and motivated to automate and improve workflows.
• Comfortable and adept at navigating social media platforms and other online spaces.
• Ideally based in the Bay Area; available to work hybrid from our San Francisco office a few days each week.
• 3–6+ years of relevant experience in a client-facing, client-ops, consulting, or similar environment.
• Comfort with Airtable, data analysis, and operational tooling.

Nice To Haves

• Prior experience in entertainment, tech, AI, social media, or early-stage startups is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a day-to-day partner to high-profile clients and their teams, delivering proactive, thoughtful, and responsive support.
• Manage onboarding, regular check-ins, issue escalation, and ongoing success for talent and entertainment clients.
• Translate client needs into actionable workflows across operations, engineering, and leadership.
• Build trust with clients by demonstrating discretion, clear communication, and a deep understanding of their sensitivities and priorities.
• Lead monitoring and reporting workflows related to harmful content, platform escalations, and content takedowns.
• Maintain and improve our Airtable-based operational system—ensuring data accuracy, actionable insights, and reliable reporting to platforms and clients.
• Draft, refine, and deliver ad-hoc reports for clients and partners (platforms, legal teams, agencies).
• Support the sales cycle by preparing client materials, including deep research on sales prospect needs.
• Collaborate with leadership on POCs, pilot setups, and custom workflows for enterprise prospects.
• Act as a voice of the client internally—surfacing patterns, insights, and opportunities to improve our product.
• Coordinate closely on platform relationships, policy issues, and emerging AI-likeness threats.
• Support special projects (e.g., content audits, platform research, client education materials) as needed, including by identifying operational inefficiencies and implementing scalable systems and processes.

Benefits

• Direct ownership and influence in shaping client operations from the ground up.
• Work closely with founders and high-profile clients navigating one of the fastest-moving areas of technology and policy.
• Be part of a small, ambitious, and high-impact team working on a meaningful mission.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed