Strategic Operations Lead

The Role

This is a full-time, on-site role in the Bay Area, CA for a Strategic Operations Lead reporting to our Vice President of Strategic Operations. You will lead the company's most critical cross-functional initiatives, working directly with our executive team, VPs, and Directors. You will take on the roadblocks that cut across teams, set the plan, align the leaders who need to act on it, and drive it to resolution across engineering, manufacturing, business development, and operations. As we grow from a small founding team into a production company, you will also build the structure that lets every team move faster.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the company's most critical cross-functional initiatives, partnering with our VP of Strategic Operations and the executive team from diagnosis to resolution. Recent examples include moving our facility, scaling hiring, and setting company-wide policy.

• Align executives, VPs, and Directors around a shared plan with clear owners and deadlines, and hold everyone accountable for their commitments.

• Scale the company's structure across teams: org design, decision rights, operating cadence, and the processes that hold them together.

• Turn leadership priorities into plans, milestones, and owners, and track them to completion.

• Find operational bottlenecks before they slow the team down, and fix them with the leaders who own them.

• Build the reports and updates leadership uses to track programs, hiring, and spend.

• Drive operational workstreams for strategic partnerships and Government customer programs, including coordination with our team in Japan.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in management consulting, investment banking, strategy & operations, or business operations.

• Has led cross-functional initiatives end to end while working directly with C-level executives and senior leaders: taken an ambiguous, high-stakes problem, structured it, and driven it to resolution across multiple teams.

• Able to lead without formal authority: align senior leaders with competing priorities and get them to act.

• Track record of building structure from scratch: processes, operating cadences, policies, or org design.

• Strong analytical and structured problem-solving skills, with the ability to move from analysis to execution in the same week.

• Excellent written and verbal communication with executives, engineers, and external partners.

• Comfortable with ambiguity and shifting priorities in an early-stage startup.

• Willingness to travel up to 25%, including international travel.

Preferred / Nice to Have

• Experience in defense, maritime, aerospace, robotics, autonomous systems, or advanced manufacturing.

• Familiarity with U.S. Government contracting and defense programs.

• Experience at a high-growth startup, ideally through a scaling phase.

• Experience working with engineering, manufacturing, or operations teams.

• Military leadership or operational experience.

Compensation & Benefits

• Base pay: $130,000 – $220,000 per year, depending on experience.

• Equity: significant early-stage stock options.

• Benefits: employer-sponsored health, dental, and vision coverage.

Ideal Candidate Profile

• You come from consulting or investment banking, and you want to put that rigor to work for national security by building a large company from scratch.

• You have led cross-functional problems to resolution alongside senior executives, not just analyzed them.

• You can walk into a room of executives, set the agenda, and leave with owners and deadlines.

• You take on problems no one else owns: a facility move one month, hiring the next, company policy after that.

• You hold yourself and others accountable for outcomes, regardless of title.

Location & Eligibility

On-site in the Bay Area, CA. Reports directly to the Vice President of Strategic Operations.

This role may involve access to technology and technical data controlled under U.S. export-control laws (ITAR/EAR). Candidates must meet applicable U.S. export-control requirements, which may include qualifying as a "U.S. person" (U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or other protected individual). A security clearance is not required.