Chief of Staff, Operations

Photon; New York (NY); On-site; USD 170,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Benefits

Job summary

Photon is seeking a Chief of Staff, Operations in Brooklyn to serve as a highly flexible execution partner to the COO. You’ll take on the company’s highest-priority gaps, from strategic projects to hands-on process work, and own the systems behind hiring, onboarding, and team support.

You’ll lead internal tooling and AI-assisted workflows, deciding what to automate, build, buy, or retire across people processes and beyond. Expect dynamic, cross-functional problem-solving across the org.

Qualifications

• 4–6+ years in a high-ownership, high-breadth operational role (chief of staff, business operations, startup operations generalist).
• Ability to build structure and process from ambiguity across multiple functional areas.
• Experience at an early-stage (Series A/B) startup.
• Hands-on tooling/automation fluency — scripting, no-code, or AI-assisted platforms to eliminate manual work.
• Strong written and verbal communication — for an executive audience.
• Proven follow-through and resourcefulness: tasks get finished.
• Willing to work in-office in Brooklyn.

Responsibilities

• Act as a highly flexible execution partner to the COO — take on the highest-priority gaps at any moment.
• Own the systems behind hiring, onboarding, and supporting people as an operations problem.
• Own the internal tool stack and AI-assisted workflows — decide tools, automation, and lifecycle.
• Build and improve operational systems across functions and move to the next area after stabilizing each system.
• Hold context across the company to flag risks and connect dots before problems arise.
• Drive execution on the COO’s initiatives, closing operational gaps without a formal owner.

Skills

High ownership

Context-switching

Executive communication

Problem solving

Tools

Scripting

No-code

AI-assisted platforms

Job description

Chief of Staff, Operations

Brooklyn, NYC – Operations – 1 day ago – In office – Full-time

Company Mission

Photon gives patients ownership of prescriptions. We’re building the infrastructure that connects prescribing to fulfillment, giving patients a simpler way to understand their options and choose where and how to get their medications. Our vision is to make prescriptions more transparent, accessible, and consumer-driven.

Who We're Looking For

You can be thrown at almost anything and figure out how to make it work. One month that might mean rebuilding how the company hires and onboards people, the next it might be automating a reporting process no one’s had time to fix, the next it's diving into a data problem that’s been ignored. You don't need a fixed lane — you build one wherever the company needs it most right now.

You think in systems, not job descriptions. People process, internal tooling, budgeting, onboarding — to you these are all just systems that either work or don't, and you're the person who makes them work. You'd rather build a script, a workflow, or an AI-assisted tool than hire your way out of a manual process. You're allergic to busywork, especially your own — if something's repeatable, you make it repeatable by a system, not by you doing it again next month.

Your job is to spin the web: build the system, get it working cleanly, hand-off or automate it, then move to the next thread that needs attention. You're not looking to permanently own one function — you're looking to be the person who makes everything work, everywhere, and then moves on to what's next. That requires real resourcefulness: you don't wait to be told how, you figure it out.

You can hold a lot of context across the entire company in your head at once — priorities, people, half-finished projects, upcoming deadlines — without losing the thread or spiraling off chasing the wrong thing. You know the difference between "interesting" and "important right now," and you protect your attention accordingly.

Core Responsibilities

• Act as a highly flexible execution partner to the COO — take on whatever the company's highest-priority gap is at any given moment, from strategic projects to hands-on process work
• Own the systems behind how Photon finds, hires, onboards, and supports its people — treating this as an operations and tooling problem, not an HR administration one
• Own the company's internal tool stack and AI-assisted workflows — deciding what tools exist, what gets automated, and what gets built, bought, or retired, across people processes and beyond
• Build and improve operational systems across functions — get each one running cleanly and efficiently, then move on to the next area that needs it, rather than settling into permanent ownership of any one system
• Hold context across the full company — priorities, projects in flight, and cross-team dependencies — so you can flag risks and connect dots before they become problems
• Drive execution on the COO’s top initiatives, from strategic projects to closing operational gaps that don't have a natural owner

Required Qualifications

• 4-6+ years in a high-ownership, high-breadth operational role (chief of staff, business operations, startup operations generalist) with a track record of context-switching across genuinely different problem types
• Demonstrated ability to build structure and process from ambiguity, across more than one functional area
• Experience at an early-stage (Series A/B) startup, where process didn't exist yet and you had to build it
• Real, hands-on tooling/automation fluency — comfortable using scripting, no-code, or AI-assisted platforms to eliminate manual work rather than absorb it
• Strong written and verbal communication — comfortable synthesizing information for an executive audience
• Proven follow-through and resourcefulness: things you own get finished, without needing a playbook handed to you
• Excited to work in-office in Brooklyn

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building internal tools yourself — scripting, automation, or AI-assisted platforms
• Background in healthcare or health-tech
• Comfort with data — light analysis, spreadsheets, or dashboards to inform decisions

Why Join Us

Photon is reimagining how prescriptions move through the healthcare system—making it simpler, faster, and more transparent for patients, providers, and pharmacies alike. You'll:

• Get the broadest possible view of how a Series A company scales — closer to the center of the business than almost any other role
• Take on genuinely different problems month to month, with the latitude to define how and where you add the most value
• Build the systems — including the AI-assisted ones — that let Photon feel as good to work at at 80 people as it does at 20
• Join a team that gives a shit — about the work, about each other, and about doing things the right way

Our Values

Be a Pizza Rat – We're ambitious subway dwellers. It's our slice and we're not letting go.

Make Rice – We don't prepare fish until we've mastered rice. Quality is in the details.

Put it in Orbit – We know success happens well after lift-off. The rocket isn't our mission.

Seek Buried Treasure – We're digging in unexpected places. Our adventure has meaning.

Grow in Darkness – We're thriving amidst forest decay. Our day in the sun will come.

Pay Transparency

The estimated base salary for this role is $170,000 – $200,000 USD annually. Actual compensation will depend on skills, qualifications, and experience, and includes equity and benefits. At our stage, we place significant value on equity as part of total compensation.

Compensation

The base pay range for this role is $170,000 – $200,000 per year.