Chief of Staff - Optexity

Praxis, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Optexity in San Francisco seeks a hands-on generalist operator who owns the business, legal, and people infrastructure that keeps a small team running. You'll sign contracts, process payroll, ensure compliance, and prevent critical gaps while working directly with the founders.

In a healthcare-informed setting, BAAs, HIPAA, and state privacy rules matter; you will build systems, vendor relationships, and processes so operations scale smoothly.

Qualifications

• A generalist comfortable owning many unrelated functions at once and context-switching cleanly between them.
• Strong execution and follow-through — you close loops and things don't slip.
• Highly organized and detail-oriented, with good judgement about what's genuinely important vs. merely urgent.
• Operates in ambiguity and builds process where none exists, without waiting for perfect instructions.
• Trustworthy with sensitive legal, financial, and personnel information.
• Willing to do unglamorous, high-value work.
• Fast learner with genuine interest in the operational and regulatory side of a healthcare company.

Responsibilities

• Legal & contracts — manage outside counsel, own the contract lifecycle (customer agreements, BAAs, NDAs, vendor and consulting agreements), and keep corporate housekeeping in order: cap table administration, board and investor documents, entity and state registrations.
• Compliance — own HIPAA and state privacy compliance operations, coordinate audits and security certifications (e.g. SOC 2), maintain policies, records, and vendor due-diligence.
• HR & people ops — run onboarding/offboarding, offer letters, benefits and PEO administration, immigration/visa support, and maintain employee policies and records.
• Accounting & payroll — oversee bookkeeping with accountants, run payroll and contractor payments, manage AP/AR, expenses, banking, and monthly close.
• Everyday operations — manage vendors, software, insurance, and logistics for a fast-growing team; own operational aspects end-to-end.
• Founder leverage — take ambiguous operational problems, structure them, and drive them to done.

Skills

Generalist

Execution

Organization

Ambiguity tolerance

Trustworthy

Willingness to do unglamorous work

Fast learner

Job description

About Optexity

Optexity is a product-driven research lab building clinical reasoning and computer use models on data no other lab can reach. We deploy directly inside clinics and hospitals — including systems with no APIs, using integration infrastructure we've built and open-sourced — and in return become their preferred partner. That gives us proprietary clinical reasoning trajectories from practicing physicians, and a feedback loop between real patient encounters, our models, and the products built on top of them.

We're a small, fast-moving founding team with multiple published papers in NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR etc and background from Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, CMU, IIT.

We are backed by world-class investors and leaders like Jeff Dean, Neotribe VC, PearVC, Together Fund and Zapier Fund.

How we work

• Customer obsession — we start with the customer and work backwards

• Intellectual honesty — ideas matter more than titles; we communicate directly and assume good intent, even in disagreement

• Bias for action — we build and learn with customers rather than debate in the abstract

• Extreme ownership — we own outcomes, not just tasks, and see problems through

About the role

This is not an EA role, and not a strategy role — it's a hands-on generalist operator who owns the business, legal, and people infrastructure that lets a small team move fast without breaking. You'll be the person who makes sure the company runs: contracts get signed, people get paid, compliance holds up, and nothing critical falls through the cracks. You'll work directly with the founders and build the operational backbone from close to zero.

Why this role exists

Legal, HR, accounting, payroll, compliance, and day-to-day operations all sit on the founders' plates today, alongside product and engineering. In a healthcare company, this surface area is heavier than usual — BAAs, HIPAA and state privacy obligations, and customer contracts can't be an afterthought. We need one person to own all of it end to end: not just execute tasks, but build the systems, vendor relationships, and processes so these functions run reliably as we scale.

What you'll do

• Legal & contracts — manage outside counsel, own the contract lifecycle (customer agreements, BAAs, NDAs, vendor and consulting agreements), and keep corporate housekeeping in order: cap table administration, board and investor documents, entity and state registrations

• Compliance — own the operational side of HIPAA and state privacy compliance, coordinate audits and security certifications (e.g. SOC 2) as they come up, and maintain the policies, records, and vendor due-diligence that customers and regulators expect

• HR & people ops — run onboarding/offboarding, offer letters, benefits and PEO administration, immigration/visa support for the team, and keep employee policies and records clean and current

• Accounting & payroll — own bookkeeping oversight with our accountants, run payroll and contractor payments, manage AP/AR, expenses, banking, and the monthly close

• Everyday operations — manage vendors, software and tooling, insurance, and the logistics of a fast-growing team; be the default owner for the operational thing no one else is holding

• Founder leverage — take ambiguous operational problems off the founders' plates, structure them, and drive them to done

What we look for

• A generalist who's comfortable owning many unrelated functions at once and context-switching cleanly between them

• Strong execution and follow-through — you close loops and things don't slip

• Highly organized and detail-oriented, with good judgment about what's genuinely important vs. merely urgent

• Operates in ambiguity and builds process where none exists, without waiting for perfect instructions

• Trustworthy with sensitive legal, financial, and personnel information

• Willing to do unglamorous, high-value work

• Fast learner with genuine interest in the operational and regulatory side of a healthcare company

Nice to have

• Prior chief-of-staff, business ops, or startup operations experience

• Exposure to legal, HR, finance, or compliance functions

• Familiarity with healthcare compliance (HIPAA, BAAs) or other regulated environments

• Experience standing up processes and vendors at an early-stage company

What you get

• Direct, daily work with the founders, plus exposure to board and investor conversations

• True zero-to-one scope — building the operational foundation of the company, not executing a fixed playbook

• Competitive salary and meaningful equity