Business Operations Manager

Abel Police; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive medical and dental

Flexible PTO

Job summary

Abel is seeking a Business Operations Manager to own the operating backbone in San Francisco, coordinating government procurement, contracts, CJIS compliance, finance, and people operations. You will work closely with the CEO and a small senior team, inheriting documented runbooks and an AI-assisted toolchain.

You will drive end-to-end procurement responses, maintain contract pipelines, and ensure compliance with CJIS and security requests. A fast-moving, high-trust environment awaits.

Qualifications

• 4+ years in startup operations, business operations, legal ops, chief of staff, or a similar role.
• Meticulous with contracts, government paperwork, and compliance detail — small errors have real consequences in our market.
• Strong judgment and discretion with sensitive legal, employee, and customer information.
• Excellent project management: many moving pieces, hard external deadlines, nothing dropped.
• Comfort using AI tools daily — you automate repeat work rather than grinding through it.
• Experience working directly with founders or executives in a high-context, fast-changing environment.
• Strong written communication; you turn ambiguity into clear next steps.
• High ownership: if something is broken, unclear, or risky, you fix it without being asked.

Responsibilities

• Own government procurement end-to-end: RFP/RFQ/RFI responses, vendor-pool registrations, portal submissions, and customer reference coordination
• Run the contract pipeline: quotes, pilot agreements, information sharing agreements, MSAs, and reseller agreements, including routing to outside counsel and the CEO
• Coordinate compliance operations: CJIS requirements, security questionnaires, and customer security requests, working with our CTO and in Vanta regularly
• Manage finance operations: invoicing, payroll, multi-state registrations and tax obligations, and vendor/software spend
• Own people ops: hiring logistics, onboarding and off-boarding, benefits administration, and employment compliance
• Support sales operations: CRM hygiene, quote generation, agency document filing, and conference/event logistics
• Operate and extend our AI-assisted ops toolchain: the templates, scripts, and automations that turn repeat work into one-command workflows
• Help CEO stay focused on urgent legal, finance, customer, and hiring matters, and flag risks early, with a practical fix attached

Skills

Startup operations

Operations leadership

Project management

AI tool usage

Job description

Operations · Compliance · Finance · San Francisco, CA

Full-Time · Occasional Travel (conferences & agency events)

WHO IS ABEL?

Abel is the AI toolkit for law enforcement — purpose-built to give officers their time back. Our platform includes Abel Writer, which turns body camera footage and officer-provided material into completed police reports; Abel Chat, a CJIS-compliant assistant grounded in agency policy manuals and state code that answers with cited sources; Abel Translate, live in-field translation across 83 languages; and Abel Citizen, an online reporting portal where resident-filed reports arrive clean, translated, and NIBRS-ready.

Patrol officers spend roughly one-third of every shift writing reports. Abel gives that time back —and agencies describe it as a need-to-have, not a nice-to-have.

Backed by Y Combinator and deployed at agencies nationwide, Abel is growing fast. Selling AI to government comes with procurement, compliance, and contracting work most startups never see — which makes operations a competitive advantage here, not a back office.

THE OPPORTUNITY

Abel is hiring a Business Operations Manager to own the operating backbone of the company. You will run everything that keeps a B2G company moving: government procurement responses, contracts, CJIS compliance coordination, finance, people ops, and the internal systems that hold it all together.

You will work directly with the CEO and a small senior team, and you will inherit a documented, systematized ops function: written runbooks, filing conventions, and an AI-assisted toolchain that already automates quotes, customer agreements, pilot agreements, and sales decks. Your job is to run it, improve it, and keep the company fast as it grows.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Own government procurement end-to-end: RFP/RFQ/RFI responses, vendor-pool registrations, portal submissions, and customer reference coordination

Run the contract pipeline: quotes, pilot agreements, information sharing agreements, MSAs, and reseller agreements, including routing to outside counsel and the CEO

Coordinate compliance operations: CJIS requirements, security questionnaires, and customer security requests, working with our CTO and in Vanta regularly

Manage finance operations: invoicing, payroll, multi-state registrations and tax

obligations, and vendor/software spend

Own people ops: hiring logistics, onboarding and off-boarding, benefits administration, and employment compliance

Support sales operations: CRM hygiene, quote generation, agency document filing, and conference/event logistics

Operate and extend our AI-assisted ops toolchain: the templates, scripts, and

automations that turn repeat work into one-command workflows

Help CEO stay focused on urgent legal, finance, customer, and hiring matters, and flag risks early, with a practical fix attached

Keep office organized and stocked, ordering new supplies and managing on-site vendors as needed

YOUR FIRST 45 DAYS

Abel is a results-oriented culture. We use 45-day plans because good days lead to good weeks, which lead to good months. Here's what to expect:

Complete a structured handoff of every active workstream: contracts in flight, the conference calendar, procurement deadlines, and vendor relationships

Take over recurring cadences: expense management, invoicing, renewals tracking, and account administration

Learn the Abel product suite and the B2G sales motion from pilot to renewal

Days 15–30: Own

Run an active government procurement response end-to-end

Own the contract and quote workflows, including our document automation tools

Take over day-to-day relationships with outside counsel, accountants, and our security vendor

Days 31–45: Improve

Run the full operations calendar independently

Ship at least one process improvement that saves the team real time

Present an ops roadmap to the CEO: risks, gaps, and what to systematize next

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

4+ years in startup operations, business operations, legal ops, chief of staff, or a similar role

Meticulous with contracts, government paperwork, and compliance detail — small errors have real consequences in our market

Strong judgment and discretion with sensitive legal, employee, and customer information

Excellent project management: many moving pieces, hard external deadlines, nothing dropped

Comfort using AI tools daily — you automate repeat work rather than grinding through it

Experience working directly with founders or executives in a high-context, fast-changing environment

Strong written communication; you turn ambiguity into clear next steps

High ownership: if something is broken, unclear, or risky, you fix it without being asked

NICE TO HAVE

Experience in B2G, GovTech, public safety, or another regulated market

Familiarity with CJIS, SOC 2, security questionnaires, or public-sector procurement

Fluency with our stack: Google Workspace, HubSpot, Slack, 1Password, DocuSign, Brex, Carta — plus the AI assistants we wire into all of them

COMPENSATION & BENEFITS

Competitive salary and meaningful equity — every Abel employee is an owner

• Comprehensive medical and dental coverage
• Flexible PTO — we trust our team to manage their time

LOCATION

This position is in San Francisco, you are expected to be in office, where the rest of us are.