Charly Agency · Hybrid in Europe · Full time
Who we are
Charly Agency is a strategy-first web design, CRO, and branding agency. We started in San Francisco, took no outside investment, and grew on the strength of the work and the relationships around it. Our clients are all in the United States. Our team sits mostly in Europe, with part of it in Latin America.
We work with DTC ecommerce brands, B2B SaaS companies, and larger consumer businesses, including CrossFit and Talking Rain, alongside many founder-led brands.
The atmosphere here is genuinely positive. We are a loving team, close with each other and close with our clients, which shows up in our reviews. That trust is the asset the whole company sits on.
It comes with discipline. Agreed ways of working that people actually follow, deadlines that hold, and a quality bar that stays where it is regardless of how much we like each other. Holding both at once is most of what this role is about.
What we do
- Brand strategy, identity, and packaging
- Website design and development on Shopify, Webflow, WordPress, and Framer
- CRO audits and conversion retainers
- Copywriting and brand storytelling
- SEO and GEO built into the site rather than sold afterward
- Amazon store and listing creative
Our projects carry CRO and branding inside the same build, with heavy copywriting and storytelling underneath and technical delivery that holds up under real traffic.
Where we are right now
Thirteen people, in a high-growth phase, with more projects and moving parts than a year ago. The core is a CTO and two senior strategists, with newer designers, developers, and copy contractors coordinated by the project managers who run each account.
We are lean and plan to stay that way. Processes exist here and they are followed. Nobody writes a report that nobody reads.
The Role
The General Manager runs Charly internally so the CEO can stay on new business, partnerships, and product. You own operations, the people side, and profitability. It is the most critical hire we will make this year, and we want someone who sees themselves here long term.
The line runs from the CEO to you, and from you to the project managers and the CTO. The project managers hold the day to day relationships with their clients and with the people on their projects. You set the parameters they work inside, oversee how they run, and make sure the work gets done well. You enter a client conversation when something is time sensitive or has gone wrong, which is a small share of your week.
You are not starting from a blank page. Processes are in place for recruiting, delivery, and finance, an operations assistant supports recruiting, invoicing, and part of the reporting, and you work closely with the CEO on strategy and numbers. This is an aligned seat rather than a fully autonomous one. Direction and feedback come often and are expected to be carried through. Push back where you disagree, then land on a decision together rather than quietly taking another route.
Running the day to day
- Own the internal rhythm: standups, weekly cadence, decisions written down with owners named
- Oversee the project managers, keep visibility on scope, timelines, and quality, and see drift early
- Manage through the project managers rather than around them. Direction to designers, developers, and contractors travels through the PM who owns that project
- Unblock people. Much of the value is removing whatever stops someone from finishing
- Be the person the team goes to first
Standards and pace
- Own our SOPs. Refine them as we learn, then make sure they are implemented and followed, since a procedure nobody uses changes nothing
- Hold a high professional bar on deadlines, communication, and the quality of what leaves the door
- Address a slip the first time it happens, briefly and specifically
- Set the tempo. Push toward finishing rather than polishing, and get what is close to done over the line, since a project that ships is a project we can invoice
- Keep empathy in the conversation without letting it turn into an open-ended timeline. Understanding why something slipped and accepting that it slipped are different responses
Recruiting and capacity
- Own recruiting for contractors and full-time roles, from sourcing through test projects, offers, and onboarding, with a process and an assistant to support you
- Build a bench ahead of the pipeline instead of scrambling once a project is signed
- Maintain the rate card and capacity plan, so we know what we can safely sell into next month
- Bring in people who fit how we treat each other. A strong portfolio with the wrong temperament costs more than it adds
Profitability
Profitability is a large part of this job. Closest to the day-to-day, you see where money leaks and where it is left on the table.
- Build and own the monthly P&L, with the operations assistant producing the inputs
- Read the numbers for what to do next, and set direction on it with the CEO
- Know project margin during the project, not after it closes
- Review production costs, contractors, subscriptions, and tooling on a set cadence, with a recommendation on what to cut
- Work with the project managers to find upsells inside existing accounts, then make sure they are followed up
- Negotiate contractor and vendor rates, terms, and agreements, optimized for the long term health of the company
- Keep the spread between what we bill and what we pay healthy, with contractor hours approved by the client before we bill them
- Invoices go out on schedule without a reminder, and receivables get chased while they are still recent
Systems and growth
- Improve our SOWs and terms so scope, revisions, timelines, and payment triggers are unambiguous before a project starts, closing the gaps that cost us unpaid revisions and late payments
- Sharpen the processes we already run and retire the ones that stop earning their place
- Help move copy production, wireframing, and parts of SEO delivery onto AI tooling, which means changing habits and not only buying software
- Step into projects that go sideways, stabilize them, and hand them back. Be the escalation point when a client is unhappy, and deliver bad news early with the plan attached
Who we are looking for
- Three or more years managing international or distributed teams, including contractors. Agency or studio experience is ideal and not a requirement
- Proven at holding many competing priorities at once without dropping any or burning out. This is the single most important thing we screen for
- Steady under pressure. Warm day to day, with enough distance to stay level when the temperature rises with a client, a contractor, or a team member
- Owns mistakes without flinching. Things will go wrong on your watch, and we need the person who names it first, fixes it, and moves on. Pride slows a company down more than the error does
- Owns results the same way, and gives credit to the people who earned them
- Naturally impatient about finishing, in a way that lifts people rather than wearing them down
- Able to hold a hard line and stay well liked. You can tell someone their work is below standard on Tuesday, have an easy relationship on Wednesday, and still follow up on Thursday
- Recruits well, having sourced, tested, and onboarded people yourself
- Real familiarity with web projects. You can read a scope, sanity check a timeline, and tell when a build is behind
- Financially fluent. You have built or owned a P&L and are comfortable with utilization, margin, and cash flow
- A strong negotiator, able to hold a rate conversation without damaging the relationship
- Enjoys operational efficiency. You get satisfaction from finding the version of a process that takes half the steps
- Cares that people do their work well and that the company behaves ethically with clients, contractors, and each other, even when it costs us something
- Detailed and organized. You track what was asked, follow up, and close it out without a reminder
- Comfortable in close alignment with a CEO. You implement direction properly, raise a disagreement when you have one, and stay on the agreed path once a decision is made
- Interested in shaping culture and growing with the company over years
- Fluent English
Being straight with you
The list is wide, though this is a thirteen person agency. The scope is broad and the volume is manageable.
Staying lean matters. We have no interest in someone who spends a day producing a deck about the state of operations. The work is running the operation, and reporting exists where it helps make a decision. Hold a professional standard with each other and with clients.
You will work closely with the CEO. He is direct, cares about pace and detail, and will tell you early when something looks off. He expects the same in return, and decisions get made quickly because of it.
Logistics
- Based in Europe or North Africa, fully remote by default
- The CEO works out of Barcelona. If you are there, or want to be, the role can run as a hybrid with regular time in person. It is an option rather than a requirement, and being elsewhere is no disadvantage
- Full time, contract or employment depending on your country
- Three to four weeks of paid vacation
- We mean it about work life balance.7-8 hours of work per day and we plan capacity around that rather than treating overtime as a resource
- Compensation is competitive and based on experience
How to apply
Write to [email protected] with your CV kindly skip the cover letter template and tell us the actual story.