Executive Assistant

Kantiv (formerly Joist AI)•San Diego, CA

23d•Hybrid

About The Position

We are rebuilding how architecture, engineering, and construction firms run their marketing and revenue operations. We work with the firms that design and build the physical infrastructure around us: the buildings, bridges, hospitals, transit systems, and water plants that everyone uses and almost nobody thinks about. Our team genuinely loves this industry. AEC moves billions of dollars through workflows that still rely on spreadsheets, email threads, and tribal knowledge, and our AI-powered platform replaces that mess with software that actually understands how AEC teams pursue work, win it, and deliver it. We’re early, we’re moving fast, we’re hyper customer-centric, and we’re building the system of record for AI for an industry that’s never had one. About the role This is the role for an EA who finds genuine satisfaction in being the reason everything stands up. You’ll support the CEO to start, with 1-2 additional executives added as the company grows. Every hour the CEO spends on the wrong thing is an hour we are not winning. Your job is to find and eliminate time leakage: every 10-minute context switch, every meeting that should have been a Slack, every back-and-forth that ate a Tuesday morning. You read the subtext in a customer email and know whether it needs a same-day response or a thoughtful 24-hour one. You can tell when a leader needs 30 minutes of unscheduled thinking time and protect it without being asked. Calendar Tetris is your sport. This is a hybrid role based in San Diego. In-office enough days to actually know the team, remote enough that you control your own focus time.

Requirements

3-5+ years supporting founders or senior executives, ideally at a startup or fast-moving tech company
Supported a high-output executive in a fast environment and kept up
Planned real travel, not just booked a flight; know what to do when the 6am to JFK cancels at 4am
Write well
Held confidential information and never been the leak
Comfortable in Google Workspace, Slack, and whatever new tool we throw at you next month

Nice To Haves

Startup experience is a plus
AEC experience is a bigger plus
If you can show the judgment, neither is required

Responsibilities

Protect the CEO’s time strategically without being a rigid gatekeeper
Own a complex CEO calendar across multiple time zones, with more execs added over time
Eliminate time leakage: kill meetings that don’t need to happen, shorten the ones that do, batch the rest
Make tradeoff calls on competing requests without escalating every one
Build a calendar that reflects real priorities, not just whoever asked loudest
Protect deep work blocks like they’re customer meetings
Build automations where you can: we rely on everyone at the company to work smart with the best available tools
Be the front door for customers, investors, partners, and candidates reaching the CEO
Customers come first here; their requests get triaged with that bias and never sit
Draft and send emails on behalf of the CEO
Triage inbound: ruthlessly prioritize what gets a fast reply, what gets a holding message, what gets escalated, what waits
Handle confidential conversations (board, fundraising, hiring, customer issues) with the discretion the role demands
Plan domestic and occasional international travel: flights, hotels, ground, agendas, expense reconciliation
Coordinate trips to customer sites, which often means jobsite visits, regional AEC offices, and industry conferences (AIA, ENR events, AEC tech summits)
Run offsites, dinners, and customer visits in San Diego and on the road
Help the people you support keep their lives running so they can keep the company running
The judgment to know when a personal thing is blocking work and to handle it before anyone asks
Occasionally pick up a discrete project end-to-end when it lands between functions
Early-stage means some weeks you’ll help close a vendor contract, run point on an offsite, or unblock something for recruiting or HR