Chief of Staff

Reach AI; New York (NY); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Health coverage

MacBook or hardware provided

Flexible time off

Parental leave

Job summary

Reach AI is building the operating system for visibility in AI search. This New York-based role leads finance, legal and operations, owning budgets, contracts, payroll, and planning with the CEO as your partner.

You will build the talent machine, set up processes, and drive hiring for growth, while coordinating with a US parent and a Lisbon hub. The role includes meaningful equity and a front-row seat to a category-defining company.

Job description

In your first 6 to 12 months that means three things: running finance, legal and operations, building the machine that finds exceptional people for Reach, and running the company's operating rhythm. After that you'll take on whatever matters most next, like opening a new office or launching a new go-to-market motion.

About Reach

At Reach we're building the operating system to help companies monitor and control their visibility in AI search. We combine our platform, custom AI agents, and the top 1% of hands‑on experts in organic growth (SEO & AEO) to help companies show up when buyers are researching and comparing solutions on Google and inside AI search engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity, and turn that visibility into pipeline and revenue.

We reached $1.4M ARR in 14 months, basically bootstrapped, and we're scaling to $10M ARR by the end of 2027. We've been doing this for companies like Globalfy, Praktika.ai, LegalFly, ColdIQ (#1 Clay worldwide sales agency), Indie Campers, Carro, Fidelidade, Fraudio, Noxus and others.

• Grew Indie Campers' revenue attributed to AI search by +1,318.62% YoY (14x) and organic search revenue by +7.85% YoY across 2025, delivered during a full website migration. Read the case study.
• Helped ColdIQ influence $506K in signed contract value from organic and AI search in ~4 months, making SEO and AI search their #1 traffic source with organic traffic up 7.3x. Read the case study.
• Took Carro from a 0% to 34.58% AI citation rate (4.5x the nearest competitor) and the #3 most‑cited domain in their category, now consistently closing 7‑figure deals sourced from AI search. Read the case study.

You can see more of the results we get for our customers here.

We're turning services into software to disrupt the $150B+ SEO/AI Search market, which will get drastically bigger as search behavior shifts to AI and ad budgets follow.

"The global SEO and AEO services market will grow to $171 billion by 2030 from $81.4 billion last year", Wall Street Journal

The team

We're a team of founders, AI engineers, and SEO & AEO specialists passionate about creating a category defining company that moves fast and has fun doing it.

Here's a look at what life on the team is like. This is our latest company retreat:

Our team has a proven track record of building and scaling fast growing tech companies. Jose Velez (CEO) was the solo founder & CEO of Rely.io, an internal developer portal used by top engineering orgs like ESPN Bet and Feedzai, and launched AI products that reached #1 Product of the Day and #1 AI Product of the month on Product Hunt. He raised $3.6M from top-tier firms like J12 Ventures, Shilling Capital Partners, Techstars NYC, and TheVentureCity, as well as from notable angels.

Alex Muresan (founding Head of Growth) is a 4x founder with 2 exits, and an operator who bets on distribution over product.

Bernardo Ferreira (founding AI search strategist) led the strategy behind more than 250M organic visits and €100M+ in revenue attributed to SEO at Worten (think Iberian Amazon) in 2024.

Location

This role is based in New York, in person, working side by side with the CEO. Expect regular travel to our Lisbon hub, where most of the team works.

Pay

The base salary for this role is $140,000 to $190,000 per year, depending on experience and how much of the finance and operations scope you can own from day one, plus equity.

The opportunity: why this role?

• You multiply the CEO. You own outcomes across the company, end to end, with the CEO as your partner and nobody in between.
• You build the functions, then the teams. You'll set up finance and talent properly, then hire and lead the people who run them. The role can grow into Head of Operations and beyond, as fast as you do.
• Huge surface area, early. Finance, legal, hiring, planning, a new office, a new go-to-market experiment. Few roles give you this much of a company this early.
• Real stakes. We're growing fast and hiring across delivery, sales and engineering. What you build decides how well we scale.
• Meaningful equity and a front-row seat to how a category-defining company gets built.

The Role

We've ordered the priorities by urgency. You will own three things:

• Run finance, legal and operations

The backbone that keeps Reach running. You own the outcome; our accountants and lawyers do the specialist work.

• Money in and money out: customer invoicing and collections, reconciliation across our banks and billing, the monthly close with our accountants, vendors, and payroll coordination.
• Financial reporting: keep cash, runway and burn accurate every month, and own the financial model, budgets and forecasts together with the CEO.
• Contracts and legal: customer, vendor and new‑hire contracts, and coordination with our lawyers across a US parent company and a Portuguese subsidiary.
• Systems, not heroics: write the runbooks and automate the recurring work, so it keeps running when you're focused elsewhere.
• Build the talent machine, then hire your team

Talent is the highest‑leverage thing at Reach. You'll run recruiting like a go‑to‑market motion.

• Own the hiring funnel for every open role: target profiles with the hiring manager, candidate lists, outreach, follow‑ups, scheduling and closing.
• Measure it every week and fix what's broken, whether that's the targeting, the message or the offer.
• Own onboarding, so new people are productive in their first week.
• Hire and lead the first people on your team: a recruiter and a finance and operations specialist, when the volume calls for them.
• Run the operating rhythm and the CEO's most important projects
• Planning and follow-through: company goals, the weekly metrics review, and making sure decisions actually happen after the meeting ends.
• Prepare the big decisions: hiring plans, budgets, pricing, and fundraising materials.
• Special projects: for example running our New York presence, launching a new go‑to‑market motion, or fixing an organizational problem.
• have owned something end to end where nobody told you how: as a founder, an early employee, or an operator at a fast‑growing startup.
• are comfortable with numbers that have to tie out. You can run a month‑end close with an accountant, read a P&L and build a financial model.
• have hired people yourself, ideally by finding them, not only by interviewing them.
• do strategic work and execution work with the same energy. You can build a model in the morning, source candidates in the afternoon and chase a late invoice before you leave.
• are AI native: you automate your own work before you ask for more people.
• write clearly and can hold senior people to deadlines.
• want to build and lead a team as Reach grows.

Bonus points

• You've been a founder, or one of the first ten people at a startup that went on to raise a Series A or more.
• You started your career at a top consulting firm or bank and then moved into an operating role at a startup.
• You've set up finance or recruiting at an early‑stage company.
• You've worked across the US and Europe (entities, contracts, payroll).

This isn't for everyone (our culture is demanding)

We're building something extraordinary, and that requires extraordinary commitment. We're not the right place for everyone. Before applying, ensure you're ready for:

• High‑Performance Environment: We move fast and expect exceptional results. If you prefer comfort over challenge, this isn't your place.
• Passion‑Driven Work: We're deeply passionate about our mission, which sometimes means flexible hours to deliver on our commitments.
• Constant Evolution: Our technology, strategies, and processes will change frequently as we learn and grow. If you're not highly adaptable or don't enjoy constant learning, you'll struggle.
• Direct & Honest Communication: We value candid, straightforward feedback. If you prefer politeness over absolute clarity, our culture might feel uncomfortable.

Our commitment to the founding team

We're not looking for employees; we're looking for partners. Our compensation and benefits are designed to align with that philosophy. We want you to have a massive stake in the outcome, the best environment to do your work, and the support you need to focus on the mission.

Founder-Level Ownership & Compensation

• Meaningful Ownership: A life-changing stock option package that reflects your impact and commitment, with a standard 4-year vest and 1-year cliff. You'll have a real stake in the company you're building and directly benefit from its success.
• Early-Stage Salary: A competitive early-stage salary, designed to scale significantly with future funding and revenue.
• Scales With Milestones: As we hit our milestones, your compensation scales to competitive market rates, with significant increases tied to future funding and revenue.

Built to Work In Person

• Real hubs in Lisbon and New York: Well‑equipped spaces designed for deep work and fast iteration.
• Time together, in person: We solve the hardest problems at the whiteboard, not on a scheduled Zoom call.
• Incredible team retreats: We come together to build, and we celebrate our wins together with yearly retreats to amazing locations.

Growth & Connection

• Stay on the cutting edge: We'll cover travel to the most important conferences in our space. You’ll be a face of Reach in the community.
• Meet our customers: Travel to meet the companies we work with. Firsthand empathy is critical to building a great company.

The Essentials, Covered

• Health coverage: Top-tier medical benefits for you.
• The best tools for the job: A brand-new, fully-loaded MacBook of your choice and any other software or hardware you need to be productive.
• Flexible time off & parental leave: We trust you to manage your time. Take the vacation you need to recharge, and we offer parental leave for new parents.
• Our job titles may encompass various career levels, and the actual base pay for this position will be determined based on multiple factors including training, transferable skills, work history, business requirements, and market conditions. Additionally, this role is eligible for equity and comprehensive benefits.

Compensation Range: $140K - $190K