Chief of Staff

Nomadic AI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

NomadicML is seeking a Chief of Staff to work directly with the founders on the company’s most strategic, operational, and communications initiatives. This is a force‑multiplier role that acts as a connector across research, engineering, operations, and external partners, ensuring the product roadmap, business goals, and partnerships stay tightly aligned and execution accelerates.

You’ll drive clarity, enable fast decision‑making, and help scale the business in a fast‑moving, founder‑driven

Qualifications

• Strong analytical and organizational mindset.
• Exceptional writing and communication skills.
• Deep curiosity about AI/ML and technical products.
• Comfort in a fast-moving, founder-driven environment.
• Bias for action and ownership; proactive problem solver.

Responsibilities

• Partner directly with the founders to manage priorities and investor initiatives.
• Operationalize strategic plans into concrete deliverables across teams.
• Drive internal communication and cross-functional alignment week to week.
• Lead special projects spanning GTM, partnerships, and research collaboration.
• Support fundraising and investor relations with data, memos, and diligence.
• Own cross-functional launches and product updates.
• Represent the founders in internal and external communications when needed.

Skills

Analytical mindset

Written communications

Curiosity about AI/ML

Founder-driven environment

Ownership & initiative

Job description

About NomadicML

Americans drive over 5 trillion miles a year, more than 500 billion of them recorded. Buried in that footage is the next frontier of machine intelligence. At NomadicML, we’re building the platform that unlocks it.

Our Vision‑Language Models (VLMs) act as the new “hydraulic mining” for video, transforming raw footage into structured intelligence that powers real‑world autonomy and robotics. We partner with industry leaders across self-driving, robotics, and industrial automation to mine insights from petabytes of data that were once unusable.

NomadicML was founded by Mustafa Bal and Varun Krishnan, who met at Harvard University while studying Computer Science.

• Mustafa is a core contributor to ONNX Runtime and DeepSpeed with deep expertise in distributed systems and large‑scale model training infrastructure
• Varun is an INFORMS Wagner Prize Finalist for his research in large‑scale driver navigation AI models and one of the top chess players in the US.

Our team has built mission‑critical AI systems at Snowflake, Lyft, Microsoft, Amazon, and IBM Research, holds top‑tier publications in VLMS and AI at conferences like CVPR, and moves with the speed and clarity of a startup obsessed with impact.

About the Role

NomadicML is entering a phase of rapid growth—expanding our partnerships with top autonomy companies and accelerating our research into video‑reasoning models.

We’re seeking a Chief of Staff to work directly with the founders on the company’s most critical strategic, operational, and communication initiatives.

This is not a support role—it’s a force‑multiplier position that helps the founding team operate at 10x speed. You’ll act as a connector between research, engineering, operations, and external stakeholders, ensuring that our product roadmap, business goals, and partnerships stay tightly aligned.

You’ll help drive clarity, execution, and scale across everything from fundraising and strategic partnerships to internal OKRs and cross‑functional launches.

What You’ll Do

• Partner directly with the founders to manage key priorities, company goals, and investor initiatives.
• Operationalize strategic plans—turning abstract goals into concrete deliverables across product, research, and growth.
• Drive internal communication and alignment, ensuring all teams understand what’s most important week‑to‑week.
• Lead special projects spanning GTM strategy, hiring, partnerships, and research collaboration.
• Support fundraising and investor relations, including data gathering, memo writing, and due‑diligence coordination.
• Own cross‑functional initiatives such as launch plans, product updates, and key customer deliverables.
• Represent the founders in internal meetings and external communications when needed.

You Might Be a Fit If You Have

• A strong analytical and organizational mindset; you can simplify chaos into a clear plan.
• Exceptional writing and communication skills—you can draft crisp memos, investor updates, and presentations.
• Deep curiosity about AI, machine learning, or technical products—you’re excited to learn how things actually work.
• Comfort working in a fast‑moving, ambiguous, founder‑driven environment.
• A bias for action and ownership; you don’t wait for direction, you create it.

Nice to Have

• Prior experience in AI / ML, autonomous systems, or deep‑tech startups.
• Experience with technical products, VC communications, or enterprise partnerships.
• Comfort working closely with technical founders and interpreting complex technical concepts for business audiences.