Chief of Staff to the CEO

Chief of Staff to the CEO

AirHelp · Barcelona, Spain · Full-time · Posted 2026-09-29

Workplace: on_site

Department: Management

Description

We are hiring a Chief of Staff to partner directly with our CEO and executive leadership team to drive our next phase of growth. In this role, you will own the organizational operating cadence, ensuring rapid decision-making, seamless execution, and driving cross-functional initiatives that span across the enterprise.

We operate two distinct business lines - B2C online and B2B for mid-to-large organizations - powered by a shared technology, product, and operational core. 

This is a high-impact opportunity offering exceptional early exposure to running a global, multi-product, multi-business organization. You will lead the operational engine that translates executive decisions into action, streamline rapid decision-making, and take ownership of critical cross-company strategic initiatives that require high-level alignment.

This is an office-based position (4 days/week in the office) in Barcelona.
Salary range: Base 80.000 - 120.000 Eur gross/year

What you'll drive:

• Own the company's operating cadence — the planning calendar, executive meeting architecture, business review structure, and decision log — and have the judgment to kill meetings and reports that no longer earn their place.
• Maintain a single, honest view of every material cross-company project: status, owner, risk, and dependency, owning intake, sequencing, escalation, and closure.
• Take direct, end-to-end ownership of programmes with no natural functional home — typically compliance and regulatory, entity and restructuring, organisational change, or systems and infrastructure
• Run the board, QBR, and investor meeting process end to end: agendas, pack coordination, quality bar, and tracking every action to closure — including making sure bad news surfaces prominently rather than getting buried in an appendix
• Prepare every major decision for the CEO: framing the options, assembling the evidence, surfacing dissent before the decision rather than after it
• Recommend where the CEO's time is best spent against the company's actual priorities

What you'll deliver in your first 12 months:

• Build a single, independently verified view of every material cross-company project, with a track record of stopping ones that would otherwise have drifted
• Put the operating calendar and decision log into place and into daily use, with decision latency measurably reduced and decisions closing rather than getting endlessly revisited
• Reduce executive meeting time consumed by the operating cadence with no loss in decision quality
• Deliver your directly assigned programmes against scope, time, and cost
• Get the board process running smoothly enough that it no longer needs the CEO's intervention to function

How the role is measured:

• Decision throughput and latency — decisions made per cycle, time-to-decision, proportion of logged decisions closed on time
• Portfolio integrity — status accuracy verified independently, projects stopped rather than allowed to drift, early escalations that proved correct
• Delivery of directly owned programmes against scope, time and cost
• Board & Investors process — materials to deadline and to standard, board actions closed
• QBR and Management cadence process - materials to deadline and to standard, actions closed
• Meeting cost — executive hours consumed by the cadence, trending down while decision throughput holds or rises
• Peer assessment — whether executives and BU leaders independently describe the role as removing friction rather than adding process

Requirements

• 8-12+ years of structured problem-solving and programme delivery at pace — consulting, banking, corporate development, or an operating role with genuine cross-functional scope
• A track record of running complex, cross-functional programmes to completion without formal authority over the people delivering them
• A specific, real story of managing upward candidly — telling a senior leader something they didn't want to hear, and what happened as a result
• Commercially literate enough to follow a CFO's or CCO's argument about payback, margin, or allocation, and sharp enough to spot when it's weak
• Exceptional written communication — much of what you produce are the documents that make a decision possible in the first place
• A high tolerance for ambiguity, and for being the least powerful person in a room full of principals
• Board-level process exposure, experience in multi-business or portfolio structures, and familiarity with travel, consumer digital, marketplace, or subscription businesses are all a strong plus — but a previous "Chief of Staff" title is explicitly not required.

Disclaimer: This is not a deputy-CEO role — you won't carry the CEO's authority or overrule executives. It's not a gatekeeper role — the board and every executive keep direct access to the CEO. And it's not an executive assistant role — diary and travel administration live elsewhere. What it is: the person who makes sure decisions actually get made, and actually get followed through on.

Why AirHelp:

Real Influence: You'll sit at the center of how AirHelp actually get run — shaping the decisions, the cadence, and the priorities of the entire executive team from day one.

Autonomy: High trust, zero politics. You'll own complex, cross-company programmes end to end, without needing formal authority to get things done.

Growth: An agreed path forward, not a dead end — strong performers can move into line or functional leadership roles. Plus personal development plans, workshops, mentorship, and language classes.

Perks: Private healthcare, non-service days, wellness budget, travel stipend, gym/transport subsidy, free access to AirHelp services, and more.

Apply

Apply at AirHelp

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