Chief Operating Officer (Remote, Tampa)

Blacksmith Agency; Tampa (FL); A distancia; USD 180.000 - 300.000; Jornada completa

Descripción de la vacante

Blacksmith Agency is a remote agency building websites and running paid and organic programs for US clients. The Chief Operating Officer will run the company day to day, with sales, recruiting, delivery and marketing reporting to this seat.

The founder retains strategic direction, while you drive execution and profitability. You will oversee four department leads, set the weekly rhythm, and own margin decisions.

Formación

• A sales background with quota attainment and leadership of salespeople.
• Agency experience preferred in digital, marketing, or creative services.
• Experience owning profit and margins, not just revenue or budgets.
• Strong negotiation experience on contracts and with people.
• Proven ability to build and coach multiple leaders and teams.
• Excellent communication with leaders and founder about current realities.
• Experience growing a company from mid-size to larger scale.

Responsabilidades

• Oversee day-to-day operations including sales, recruiting, delivery and marketing.
• Lead four department leads with accountability for numbers, development, and reviews.
• Shape weekly rhythm, quarterly priorities, and resource trade-offs.
• Own profit margins and cost decisions on hires, delivery, and client engagements.
• Steer commercial conversations: contracts, vendor terms, and acceptable terms.
• Develop operators into actual leaders and accelerate decision-making.

Conocimientos

Sales leadership

Agency experience

Profitability focus

Negotiation

Team building

Clear communication

Cross-functional

Descripción del empleo

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

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

We want an operator who came up through sales.

You carried a quota, then managed salespeople against a number, then ran a sales org as a VP of Sales or CRO, ideally at an agency (SaaS or professional services also work), and took on the rest of a business from there. Sales is the department this seat leans on hardest, and you will run it alongside recruiting, delivery and marketing. The founder owns where the business goes; you run it day to day, with the people we actually have, and you are accountable 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

• A sales background: you carried a quota, then led salespeople against a number as a VP of Sales, CRO or sales-led general manager. You can coach a rep, run a pipeline review and close a deal yourself.
• Agency experience first: a digital, marketing or creative agency is ideal. A SaaS or professional services business also works. You know how a services company sells, prices and delivers.
• 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

• You have never managed salespeople against a number. A project, program or operations management background without sales leadership is a different seat.
• 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.