Chief of Staff

Formulate Labs; Mountain View (CA); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Formulate Labs is seeking a Chief of Staff to work closely with the Founder/CEO across diverse priorities as we scale. This high-ownership, highly varied role puts you at the center of building an early-stage company.

You may handle fundraising one day, recruiting the next, or help prepare for customer meetings while solving internal operational challenges. The right candidate thrives in ambiguity and moves quickly to deliver results.

Qualifications

• Must be comfortable owning initiatives from start to finish.
• Ability to communicate clearly with founders, investors, and teams.
• Strong organizational discipline and ability to track many moving parts.

Responsibilities

• Help drive high-priority projects across the company, especially cross-team initiatives.
• Support fundraising, investor communications, financial analysis, strategic planning, and reporting.
• Assist with recruiting, interviewing, onboarding, and building the organization as we grow.
• Prepare for and participate in important customer, partner, investor, and internal meetings.
• Research new markets, technologies, customers, partnerships, and strategic opportunities.
• Coordinate priorities across engineering, manufacturing, sales, operations, and other areas.
• Build lightweight systems and processes that improve organizational effectiveness.
• Take on special projects and solve problems outside traditional roles.
• Turn ideas and decisions into concrete next steps, owners, timelines, and results.

Skills

High ownership

Bias toward action

Excellent communication

Strong organizational skills

Analytical with numbers

Ambiguity tolerance

Startup experience

Job description

About The Role

We're looking for a Chief of Staff to work closely with the Founder/CEO across a wide range of priorities as we scale.

This is a high-ownership, highly varied role for someone who wants to be in the middle of building an early-stage company.

You may be working on fundraising one day, recruiting the next, helping prepare for a customer meeting, solving an internal operational problem, researching a new market, or driving a project that doesn't yet have a natural owner.

We're looking for someone hungry, resourceful, highly organized, and excited to break into physical AI. The right person will be comfortable with ambiguity, move quickly, and take responsibility for getting important things across the finish line.

What You'll Do

• Help drive high-priority projects across the company, especially initiatives that span multiple teams or don't yet have a clear owner.
• Support fundraising, investor communications, financial analysis, strategic planning, and company reporting.
• Help with recruiting, interviewing, onboarding, and building out the organization as we grow.
• Prepare for and participate in important customer, partner, investor, and internal meetings.
• Research new markets, technologies, customers, partnerships, and strategic opportunities.
• Help coordinate priorities across engineering, manufacturing, sales, operations, and other parts of the company.
• Build lightweight systems and processes that help the organization operate more effectively.
• Take on special projects and solve problems that fall outside traditional job descriptions.
• Help turn ideas and decisions into concrete next steps, owners, timelines, and results.

What We're Looking For

• Experience as a Chief of Staff, founder, early-stage startup operator, investor, consultant, or in another high-intensity environment.
• Strong interest in AI, robotics, manufacturing, and the emerging physical AI ecosystem.
• Extremely high agency and a bias toward action.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Highly organized and able to keep track of many moving pieces at once.
• Strong analytical ability and comfort working with numbers, research, and financial information.
• Comfortable operating with incomplete information and figuring things out as you go.
• Low ego, high standards, and a genuine desire to build something great.

Previous experience in robotics, hardware, manufacturing, or industrial technology is a plus, but not required. We'd also be excited about someone coming from software, investing, consulting, or another startup who wants to move into the physical world.

The Person We're Looking For

You are probably earlier in your career than a traditional executive, but unusually ambitious for your level of experience.

You want exposure to nearly every part of building a company and are willing to take on whatever problems are most important. You don't need a perfectly defined lane, and you're comfortable shifting between strategy and execution.

You may eventually want to found a company yourself, lead a major function, or become a senior operator. This role is an opportunity to learn by doing while having real responsibility inside a fast-moving AI and robotics company.

Why This Is Different

• Join a seed-funded AI and robotics company at an important stage of growth.
• Work across nearly every part of the business rather than being confined to one function.
• Get direct exposure to fundraising, robotics commercialization, manufacturing, recruiting, strategy, and company building.
• Work at the intersection of AI, robotics, manufacturing, and the physical economy.
• Take on meaningful responsibility early and grow the scope of the role as the company scales.
• Competitive compensation and meaningful equity.

This is a full-time, hybrid role based in Mountain View / Silicon Valley.