Chief of Staff (CTO)

Polymer; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 100,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Meaningful equity ownership

Healthcare, dental, and vision

Early-stage ownership and impact

Competitive salary

Job summary

Cedar is building the operating system for urban housing delivery. We combine architecture with software and data systems to accelerate projects from land to approved designs.

We seek a Chief of Staff to work directly with our CTO and keep our engineering org running smoothly. You will own the operating rhythm, ensure planning occurs, decisions are written down, and follow-ups are completed so nothing slips.

Qualifications

• Early in your career, 0–6 years, or an MBA seeking an operating role in a small company.
• Cheerful persistence: ask questions firmly when needed.
• Observant: spot issues before they escalate.
• Organized by instinct and inclined to write things down.
• Comfortable holding senior people to commitments and working in a fast-moving startup.

Responsibilities

• Run sprint and monthly planning, set agendas, capture and publish decisions.
• Ensure weekly plans are loaded with high-value work and flag idle work.
• Keep the board honest and chase open commitments until closed or dropped.
• Investigate unfinished work to prevent repeats and surface early risks.
• Act as engineering's interface to Cedar, coordinating updates and requests.
• Coordinate hiring, onboarding, HR logistics, vendors, space and events.
• Build lightweight processes, definitions of done, and clear ownership.

Skills

Organizational skills

Strong communication

Attention to detail

Stakeholder management

Startup experience

Job description

Help reinvent how housing gets designed, permitted, and built in America.

Cedar is building the operating system for urban housing delivery. We combine architectural expertise with software, automation, and data systems to dramatically accelerate how projects move from land acquisition to approved designs and construction. The result: faster timelines, higher quality, lower risk, and more housing in the cities that need it most.

Our team blends architects, engineers, and product builders. We design beautiful, responsive housing—and we build the software systems that make great architecture scalable.

The Role

We're looking for a Chief of Staff to work directly with our CTO and keep our engineering org running.

Cedar's engineering team has outgrown what one person can hold in their head. Sprints need running, commitments need chasing, reviews and check-ins need to actually happen on schedule, and requests need somewhere to land other than a DM. Right now too much of that sits with our CTO, which means it competes with the strategic and technical work only he can do.

Your job is to own that structure and hold everyone to it. You'll manage the operating rhythm the team runs on, and make sure it doesn't quietly erode: planning happens, decisions get written down, follow-ups close, nothing slips unnoticed. A big part of the job is simply watching closely: you'll see problems before anyone else does, and your job is to say so early rather than wait for them to surface on their own.

You'll also be engineering's interface to the rest of Cedar, and handle the operational glue around the team—hiring coordination, onboarding, and office logistics—working alongside a founder every day while doing it.

This is a high-ownership, early-career role with a lot of surface area. If you're organized by instinct, cheerfully persistent, and want to see up close how an early-stage company actually gets built, there's a lot of room to do great work here.

What You'll Work On

• Running sprint planning, monthly planning, and retros. Setting agendas, capturing decisions, publishing them
• Making sure every week is properly planned and everyone has high-value work loaded—flagging when someone's idle or pointed at the wrong thing
• Keeping the board honest and chasing every open commitment until it's closed or explicitly dropped
• Interrogating what didn't get finished and why, so the same slip doesn't repeat
• Watching for early signs of trouble (a stalled project, an engineer who's gone quiet, a decision nobody made) and raising them to the CTO while they're still small
• Scheduling and prepping meetings, then making sure the follow-ups actually happen
• Keeping our management rhythm on the rails. 1:1s, check-ins, and performance reviews happen on schedule, with prep done and notes captured
• Coordinating feedback cycles: setting up the conversations, chasing the inputs, making sure nothing stalls halfway
• Serving as engineering's interface to the rest of Cedar. Fielding requests, coordinating updates outward, and carrying issues from the team back in
• Cataloging and organizing incoming requests so nothing lands in a DM and disappears
• Building the lightweight process that keeps work legible. Definitions of done, written decisions, clear owners
• Coordinating interview loops and keeping the hiring pipeline moving (~10%)
• Onboarding, HR logistics, vendors, supplies, space, and team events (~10%)

What We're Looking For

• Early in your career. Roughly 0–6 years, or an MBA looking for an operating role at a small company
• Cheerfully persistent: you'll ask a senior engineer the same question a third time without flinching
• Observant. You notice when something's off before it becomes a problem, and you say so rather than assuming someone else has it
• Organized by instinct, and you default to writing things down
• Comfortable holding senior people to commitments
• Someone who enjoys working in a fast-moving startup environment

Location

San Diego, CA (in our Encinitas office). Reports to the CTO.

Compensation & Benefits

• Competitive salary
• Meaningful equity ownership
• Healthcare, dental, and vision
• Early-stage ownership and impact