9.7. Scientific Chief of Staff

Phoenix Tailings•Woburn, MA

About The Position

Phoenix Tailings is seeking a Scientific Chief of Staff to support their CTO. This role will serve as the right hand to the CTO, focusing on project management, R&D and Technology alignment, and bridging the gap between science and business. This is a technical program management and organizational role, requiring fluency in chemistry to understand interdependencies and guide R&D priorities based on business needs. The position is distinct from the company-wide Chief of Staff role supporting the CEO.

Requirements

5-8 years in technical program management, R&D operations, or a chief-of-staff-style role supporting a technical or scientific executive/organization.
Experience in materials science, chemistry, battery, mining, or hardware/deep-tech environments strongly preferred.
Track record of building the operating rhythm for complex, multi-workstream technical programs.
Sufficient technical/scientific fluency to understand how chemistry-heavy R&D workstreams connect and depend on each other.
Skilled at translating between scientific/technical teams and commercial or executive stakeholders.
High trust, low ego, discreet.
Comfortable being the operational backbone for a technical leader deep in the science, creating rigor without becoming a bottleneck.

Nice To Haves

PhD in chemistry, chemical engineering, or materials science.
Direct lab, process engineering, or R&D execution experience.
Startup or scale-up experience where you built process rather than inherited it.

Responsibilities

Serve as the CTO's day-to-day right hand, managing priorities, preparing for cross-functional and executive conversations, and ensuring commitments are followed through.
Own project management and operating cadence across R&D and Technology, including standups, roadmap reviews, and milestone tracking.
Track dependencies across Deep R&D (chemistry, hydrometallurgy, separations, analytical) and the broader Technology function to understand how technical pieces connect and identify blockers.
Translate business, commercial, and operations priorities into an executable technical roadmap.
Translate technical progress into language understandable by the business and executive team.
Partner with the VP of Technology and other technical leads to surface risk, resolve ownership ambiguities, and prevent decision stalls.
Prepare materials and talking points for board, executive, and investor updates on technical progress.
Build necessary organizational processes (meeting hygiene, documentation, decision tracking, escalation paths) without creating bureaucracy in a fast-paced lab environment.