Business Strategy & Operations Lead

Xcimer; Denver (CO); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision coverage

401(k) with company match

Equity participation

PTO and paid holidays

Job summary

Xcimer Energy seeks a Strategy & Operations Lead to connect strategic priorities with day-to-day execution. You will partner with Program Management and the Chief of Staff to align decisions with what gets built, drive rollout of new processes, and own cross-functional initiatives end-to-end.

You'll work across finance, procurement, IT, facilities, and HR, building scalable processes, conducting analyses, and shaping how the company prioritizes resources to accelerate fusion-power programs.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in business, engineering, operations, or related field.
• MBA or equivalent experience is a plus.
• 5+ years in strategy, business operations, program management, or consulting, ideally in hardware/engineering.

Responsibilities

• Implement new operational processes: write clear documentation, design training and rollout plans, and manage post-implementation adoption.
• Manage end-to-end operational projects across finance, procurement, IT, facilities, and HR.
• Lead headcount planning and demand/supply forecasting for business operations as Xcimer scales.
• Develop and evolve the company's knowledge-management and information architecture (e.g., Confluence) and drive usage.
• Maintain a prioritized backlog of operational gaps and recommend sequencing and resourcing.
• Map end-to-end business data workflows across systems and address data/process gaps.
• Translate executive decisions into resourced initiatives with clear owners, timelines, and follow-through.
• Identify operational risks and single points of failure, mitigating them.
• Build and maintain program-level financial models linking tech decisions to economics.
• Represent operations capacity in program planning with realistic resourcing.
• Project-manage cross-functional stakeholder groups and report progress to executives.
• Prepare materials for budget reviews, board updates, and investor reporting.

Skills

Strategic planning

Cross-functional leadership

Operational excellence

Financial modeling

Headcount planning

BI/analytics

Communication

Problem solving

Education

Bachelor's degree in business, engineering, operations

MBA or equivalent experience

Tools

Confluence

Looker

Tableau

Teamcenter

Boltline

ERP

Job description

Xcimer Energy leverages decades of research on Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) combined with groundbreaking new laser architecture. Our mission is to deploy fusion power plants to meet global decarbonization goals as fast as possible. Xcimer has assembled a team of leaders in tough tech, fusion science, and manufacturing with a track record of rapid execution. Supported by leading investors, Xcimer is uniquely positioned to deliver limitless, clean, fusion power to combat climate change. Join us in powering a better world with inertial fusion!

This is a full-time role based at our headquarters in Denver, CO, reporting to the Chief Operating Officer.

As a Strategy & Operations Lead, you will apply your skills to connecting Xcimer's strategic priorities to day-to-day execution by partnering with Program Management and the Chief of Staff to close the gap between decisions made in leadership reviews and what actually gets built, running the analysis that informs program and resource prioritization, and personally driving the rollout, training, and adoption of new operational processes across the company. You'll often be the connective tissue on initiatives that don't sit cleanly inside any one function, owning ambiguous, cross-functional problems end-to-end, from first framing through implementation, and handing off a clean, sustainable process rather than a one-time fix. We are looking for our operations leaders to apply their technical expertise, problem solving skills, and dedication to quality to positively impact the future of energy!

• Serve as the implementation arm for newly approved operational processes: write clear, usable process documentation, design and run the training and rollout plan, and own the post-implementation adoption review.
• Own operational projects end-to-end — from problem definition through solutioning and implementation to a clean transition of ownership — coordinating finance, procurement, IT, facilities, and HR to deliver company-wide operational projects that don't sit cleanly inside a single engineering program.
• Own headcount planning and demand/supply forecasting for business-operations functions, building the tooling and processes that support efficient resource allocation as Xcimer scales.
• Define and evolve Xcimer's operational knowledge-management and information architecture (e.g., Confluence or similar), driving adoption and content hygiene across departments.
• Maintain a prioritized backlog of identified-but-unresourced operational process gaps across the company and recommend sequencing and resourcing to close them.
• Partner with other departments to map end-to-end business data workflows (e.g., Teamcenter, Boltline, ERP) and drive resolution of cross-team data and process gaps.
• Work with the Chief of Staff to translate decisions and action items from executive offsites and business reviews into resourced initiatives with clear owners, timelines, and follow-through.
• Identify, evaluate, and help mitigate operational risks and single points of failure across business operations functions.
• Partner with Finance to build and maintain the program-level economic models that connect technical and schedule decisions to long-run plant economics, capital requirements, and investment tradeoffs — feeding the assumptions Finance uses in its capital-markets and fundraising models — to support program prioritization and make/buy decisions.
• Partner with the Head of PMO to represent business-operations capacity and constraints (finance, procurement, IT, facilities, data systems) in program planning, ensuring program schedules are built against realistic support-function resourcing.
• Project-manage across large, cross-functional stakeholder groups: lead working sessions, wrangle multiple threads at once, and report progress up to executive stakeholders without dropping the ball.
• Prepare analysis and materials to support budget reviews, board updates, and investor reporting as requested by the COO.

• Bachelor's degree in business, engineering, operations, or a related field; MBA or equivalent experience a plus.
• 5+ years of experience in strategy, business operations, program management, or management consulting, ideally supporting a hardware, deep-tech, or complex engineering organization.
• Demonstrated experience designing and rolling out operational processes end-to-end — including training and post-implementation follow-through — in a fast-growing or resource-constrained organization.
• Demonstrated experience with headcount planning, demand/supply forecasting, or workforce modeling in a scaling organization.
• Experience supporting facilities or space planning, ideally across multiple sites.
• Strong analytical and financial modeling skills, with comfort building quantitative models that connect technical or program decisions to business and economic outcomes.
• High ownership and low ego, with a bias toward proactively stepping into ambiguous, cross-functional problems rather than waiting to be assigned one.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to work effectively — and lead meetings — across engineering, finance, procurement, IT, and executive stakeholders.
• Must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee of granted asylum

• Experience in fusion, aerospace, defense, or other capital-intensive hardware development environments.
• Familiarity with PLM/ERP and business data systems (e.g., Teamcenter, Boltline, or similar) and the challenges of integrating data across them.
• Experience administering or architecting Confluence or a similar knowledge-management platform at scale.
• Experience with BI/analytics platforms such as Looker, Tableau, or similar.
• Experience establishing or scaling a PMO, or working closely alongside one, in a matrixed engineering organization.
• Project Management Professional (PMP) or similar certification.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Xcimer Energy is proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer and is committed to attracting, retaining, and developing a highly qualified, diverse, and dedicated work force. Xcimer Energy hires and promotes people on the basis of their qualifications, performance, and abilities. We support the establishment and maintenance of a workplace that fosters trust, equality, and teamwork, in which all employees recognize and appreciate the diversity of individual team members. We provide all qualified applicants for employment and employees with equal opportunities for hire, promotion, and other terms and conditions of employment, regardless of their race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin/ethnicity, age, physical or mental disability, genetic factors, military/veteran status, or any other status or characteristic protected by federal, state, and/or local law.

Xcimer Energy will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable federal, state, and local laws.

For more information on “EEO Is the Law,” please see here and here.

Benefits

• medical, dental, and vision coverage
• basic and supplemental life insurance
• short- and long-term disability
• paid parental leave for employees at the time of birth or adoption
• a 401(k) with a company match of up to 6%
• eligible employees also receive equity, allowing them to share in the company’s long-term success

Xcimer operates under a flexible Paid Time Off (ATO) approach. Rather than a fixed number of vacation days, employees are trusted to take the time they need to rest and recharge while meeting the expectations of their role and team. In addition, employees receive paid sick time, 13 company-paid holidays, and an annual paid company shutdown. Benefits are available to regular employees, including part-time and fixed-term roles, as well as interns, with eligibility varying by benefit.