Business Operations Manager

Mantle; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote Fridays

Founding team collaboration in SF

Job summary

Mantle is building an AI-powered assistant to help families manage aging parents, with a founding operations role to connect founders and drive the company from the ground up.

You will partner with the founders to turn ambitious visions into reality, manage recruiting pipelines, automate manual workflows, and design scalable processes while staying focused on high‑leverage tasks.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of high‑performance experience in operations, consulting, or a fast‑growing startup environment.
• Swiss Army Knife ability: jump into unfamiliar areas and deliver quickly.
• Extreme Ownership: take projects from 0 to 1 with minimal supervision.
• Strategic & Pragmatic: see the big picture and do the manual work to get there.
• AI-forward: savvy with AI tools to increase personal leverage.

Responsibilities

• Build and run the Recruiting Engine to attract and close talent.
• Design operational infrastructure to scale a fast-moving startup.
• Kick off GTM foundations and customer acquisition experiments.
• Establish operating cadence for planning, prioritization, and non-technical goals.
• Lead special projects across legal, finance, and workplace operations.

Skills

Operations

Startup experience

AI tools

Strategic thinking

Autonomy

Ownership

Tools

AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude)

Job description

About Mantle

We’re building an AI agent to help families support their aging parents (origin story here).

Over 40M “sandwich generation” Americans currently manage their parent’s affairs. Keeping mom/dad safe and supported is like a second job: it’s time-consuming, stressful and on top of their already busy lives. We believe that managing our parents’ affairs should feel under control, easier and lower stress.

Co-founded by serial entrepreneur partners including Ted Zagat, who sold his previous businesses to Slack (announcement here) and Google (Zagat restaurant guides).

The Role

We are looking for a Founding Business Operations Manager to be the operational "connective tissue" of Mantle. This is a foundational role for a high-output generalist who wants to build a company from the ground up.

You will work side‑side with the founders to turn an ambitious vision into a reality. This role is for a builder and an executor. On any given day, you might be setting up our first marketing campaign, managing the recruiting pipeline for engineers, or automating a manual workflow that’s slowing us down.

To be clear: This role is not always sexy. It requires someone who is willing to handle the unglamorous, manual "grunt work" today so that we can automate and scale it tomorrow. You are the person who fills the gaps, solves the "problem of the week," and ensures the founders can stay focused on the highest‑leverage tasks.

What You'll Build

• The Recruiting Engine: Build and run the process that helps us attract and close exceptional talent.
• Operational Infrastructure: Design the systems and standards that allow a fast‑moving startup to scale without breaking.
• Go‑to‑Market Foundations: Execute our initial marketing motions and customer acquisition experiments.
• Operating Cadence: Establish how the company plans, prioritizes, communicates, and delivers on non‑technical goals.
• Special Projects: Lead high‑priority initiatives across legal, finance, and workplace operations that don’t yet have a dedicated owner.

What We’re Looking For

Required Experience

• 5+ years of high‑performance experience in operations, consulting, or a fast‑growing startup environment.
• Proven "Swiss Army Knife" ability: A track record of jumping into unfamiliar areas and delivering results quickly.
• Extreme Ownership: A history of taking projects from 0 to 1 with minimal supervision.
• Strategic & Pragmatic: The ability to see the big picture but the willingness to do the manual work required to get there.
• AI-Forward: You are savvy with AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude, automation agents) to increase your own personal leverage.

Ideal Background

• Early‑stage startup experience where you wore many hats.
• Experience building functions from scratch (e.g., being the first HR, Marketing, or Ops hire).
• Strong product sense and a clear instinct for what matters to users.
• Mission‑driven: You care deeply about helping families navigate the complexities of aging

Who Thrives Here

• Builders: You love creating things from scratch and taking full ownership
• Scrappy: You operate well without a lot of structure or resources and find ways to "get it done"
• Great collaborator: You foster great working relationships
• Founder‑minded: You think like an owner and care deeply about company outcomes
• AI-forward: You embrace modern AI
• Strategic and pragmatic: You set direction and make practical decisions quickly
• Autonomous: You thrive with minimal direction
• Mission-driven: You care about what we’re building

What You’ll Get

• Meaningful work: Build a consumer product that will make a real difference in the lives of millions of families, with real technical ownership, fast pace, and huge financial potential
• Founding scope: Shape our business strategy and culture from the very beginning
• Partnership with founders: Work closely with Mantle’s co‑founders, including involvement in the biggest decisions
• Learning & growth: Opportunity to build a category‑defining company from the ground up
• Real ownership: Your decisions will shape our product, business and culture
• Remote Fridays: Work from home every Friday. Monday through Thursday, we build together in person in San Francisco