Chief Operating Officer (Remote, New York)

Blacksmith Agency LLC; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Blacksmith Agency is seeking a Chief Operating Officer to run the company day to day in a fully remote setting serving US clients. You will oversee sales, recruiting, delivery and marketing, reporting to the founder as the integrator who makes the vision happen.

You will manage four department leads, set weekly rhythm, oversee profit margins, and negotiate client contracts and vendor terms. Candidates must have prior multi-function leadership with real P&L responsibility and strong communication.

Qualifications

• Leadership across multiple functions with P&L responsibility.
• Experience scaling teams from 40 to 140 as part of growth.
• Proven contract and vendor negotiation experience.
• Strong communication skills with senior stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Oversee four department leads and ensure their development and performance.
• Define the weekly rhythm, quarterly priorities, and decision-making when conflicts arise.
• Own profit margins and the cost drivers of delivery and hiring decisions.
• Lead commercial conversations including client contracts and vendor terms, and coach leaders into stronger performance.

Skills

Leadership

P&L management

Negotiation

Communication

People development

Job description

About The Role

Blacksmith Agency is a remote agency building websites and running paid and organic programs for US clients. As Chief Operating Officer you run the company day to day. Sales, recruiting, delivery and marketing all report to this seat. Today that work sits on the founder's desk, which is the whole reason it is open.

Blacksmith Agency

• Operations
• Full time
• Remote (USA or Canada)

About The Role

Blacksmith Agency is a remote agency building websites and running paid and organic programs for US clients. As Chief Operating Officer you run the company day to day. Sales, recruiting, delivery and marketing all report to this seat. Today that work sits on the founder's desk, which is the whole reason it is open.

This is the integrator seat. If you run on EOS you know the shape already: the founder is the visionary and owns where the business goes, and you are the one who makes it happen, on a date, with the people we actually have. Each department lead knows their function better than you will. You are accountable for all four of them together, and for the profit number underneath.

What You Own

• Four department leads: their numbers, their development, their reviews, and the call when one of them is not going to get there.
• The week. The meeting rhythm, this quarter's priorities, and what gets cut when two of them collide.
• Profit, measured on attainment rather than activity. Margin on delivery, the real cost of a hire, which business we take and which we turn down.
• The commercial conversations: client contracts and the redlines that come back on them, vendor terms, and what we will and will not agree to.
• Building strong operators into actual leaders. Several of them have never been coached as one.
• The decisions that wait on the founder today, made the same day instead.

What You Need

• More than one function reporting to you, where their numbers, their hiring and the decision when a leader was not working out were yours to make. Running a large team inside a single function is a different job.
• You joined a company at one size and left it three or four times bigger. Forty people to a hundred and forty is the shape we mean. Expect to be asked for the headcount the day you arrived, the day you left, and what you put in place to make the second number survivable.
• A profit number you personally carried. Margin, not revenue somebody else sold and not a budget you were handed to spend.
• Real negotiation experience, on contracts and with people. This seat sits across the table often.
• A communicator. Most of what this job is, is being clear with four leaders and one founder about what is true right now.

Please do not apply if

• Nobody has ever reported to you, or you have never owned someone's review or had to performance-manage a leader.
• You have only ever led inside one function.
• The company you point to for growth was already large when you arrived.
• What you want is the visionary seat. That one is taken, and this is explicitly the other one.

None of these are preferences we bend on. They are how we screen, so applying anyway costs you an hour and gets you a no.

Process

Three conversations, then a decision. A thirty minute screen with our recruiter, a first round with the founder this seat reports to, and a final. No take-home project and no panel interview.