Chief of Staff

About the role

Most job posts are designed to collect as many applications as possible.

This is not one of them.

At Simplify, we work directly with startup founders to help them hire for high-priority roles.

We're partnering with a fast-growing AI inference company in San Francisco to hire a Chief of Staff — a high-agency operator who will work directly with the CEO and turn incomplete thoughts into finished outcomes across operations, customers, recruiting, finance, strategy, legal, and special projects. $150–200K base + equity.

About the company

One-liner: Building AI systems that automatically optimize inference workloads across silicon — making LLM inference faster, cheaper, and more energy-efficient

Stage: Small, well-funded team growing quickly, HQ in SF. They serve trillions of tokens a month for mission-critical workloads, and their customers include Vercel and Neon Health.

At this size, important work rarely fits neatly into one function. Today, much of that work ends up with the CEO. Your job is to change that: take ownership, apply judgment, build the minimum system needed, and make sure the highest-priority work actually gets finished.

This is not a coordinator role. Some of the work will be strategic; some will be deeply operational. The common thread is that it matters to the company and you own the outcome.

What you'll work on

• Take ambiguous problems from the CEO and drive them from rough idea to completed outcome
• Keep important company priorities from falling through the cracks across teams
• Help manage key customer relationships — visits, dinners, meetings, follow-ups, events, and anything else that makes customers feel exceptionally taken care of
• Own company operations that do not yet justify a dedicated function, including office operations, vendors, logistics, travel, contracts, and special projects
• Support high-priority recruiting searches and help close exceptional candidates
• Handle legal and administrative workflows alongside outside counsel and drive them through resolution
• Turn technical context from engineering into clear communication for customers, candidates, investors, and partners
• Identify recurring bottlenecks and either fix them, build a lightweight system around them, or help hire the person who should own them permanently
• Do whatever else is most important for Wafer that week

What we look for

• Extreme agency — when something is unclear, your instinct is to figure it out rather than wait for instructions
• Strong judgment — you know when to decide independently and when to bring someone else in
• Unusual organization and attention to detail — things do not disappear when they are handed to you
• Range — you can move between customer work, finance, recruiting, operations, and special projects in the same day
• Clear communication and the ability to represent the company with customers, candidates, investors, and partners
• Low ego — booking a restaurant for a customer and helping think through a financing decision can both be important parts of the job
• Experience in a fast-moving, early-stage, or otherwise extremely demanding environment
• Discretion with sensitive company information
• Technical curiosity and enough fluency to learn quickly from AI infrastructure engineers
• In person in San Francisco, 5 days/week
• Visa sponsorship and transfers are available, including H-1B, O-1, TN, and STEM OPT

Nice to have

• Startup, founder's office, Chief of Staff, or early operations experience
• Experience owning important customer, partner, or investor relationships
• Hands-on exposure to recruiting, finance, contracts, legal workflows, or office operations
• Experience at an AI infrastructure, developer tools, or deeply technical company
• A track record of building lightweight systems without adding unnecessary process

Why join

• $150–200K base + equity — plus fully covered medical, dental, and vision, daily lunch and dinner, unlimited PTO, and a $1K/month housing stipend near the office
• Work directly with the CEO on the company's most important problems
• Breadth with real ownership — strategy and execution live in the same role
• Build the systems and functions a fast-growing company needs before they have dedicated owners
• Small, fast-moving team where your work changes how the whole company operates
• This is a true operator seat, not an executive-assistant or coordination role