VP of Ops

Terranova; Berkeley (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity opportunities

Significant ownership in the company

Job summary

Terranova, located in Berkeley, California, is seeking a COO or VP Operations to lead execution across multiple functions in a high-growth environment. This is a critical role focused on operations, strategy, and team management, suited for a seasoned operator with deep tech experience.

The successful candidate will be instrumental in supporting the company's mission to build intelligent robotic systems, ensuring field deployments and internal processes run smoothly. This role offers a unique opportunity to shape the future of a defining hard-tech company.

Qualifications

• Experience leading operations or strategy in high-growth deep tech or hardware startups.
• Ability to manage technical teams and make high-quality decisions.
• Strong comfort with stakeholders including investors and government officials.

Responsibilities

• Own company-wide execution across all functions.
• Build and run the operating system of the company.
• Drive field deployments from planning through completion.

Skills

Operational judgment

Team management

Customer engagement

Strategic planning

Job description

About Terranova

Backed by leading deep tech VCs, Terranova builds intelligent robotic systems to terraform the Earth itself - lifting land, restoring wetlands, and protecting critical infrastructure from floods. Our mission is to preserve the built environment, create new habitats, and usher in an era of abundance. Our work supports climate resilience, disaster recovery, housing development, and defense across the United States and beyond.

We’re assembling a world‑class team that wants to work on something real, physical, and civilization‑scale. If you want your work to reshape the world (literally), this is the place to do it.

What to Expect

We are looking for a COO or a VP Operations who can function as a true company operator: owning execution across engineering, field operations, manufacturing, recruiting, finance, customer delivery, and internal systems. This is a cofounder‑level role at a very early company. This person will lead from the front, run an extremely tight operating cadence, and make sure the hundreds of things required to keep projects moving get done.

The upside is meaningful equity, ownership, and the chance to help build one of the defining hard‑tech companies of the next decade.

Key Responsibilities

• Own company-wide execution across engineering, operations, deployments, hiring, finance, procurement, legal coordination, and customer delivery.
• Build and run the operating system of the company: weekly cadence, project plans, dashboards, accountability loops, and decision-making processes.
• Manage and motivate a high‑intensity technical team while earning credibility with engineers, field operators, and founders.
• Drive field deployments from planning through completion, ensuring projects do not slip because of logistics, staffing, materials, permitting, vendors, or customer coordination.
• Work directly with the CEO to support fundraising, board communication, strategic planning, and company priorities.
• Support GTM and customer execution across PE firms, developers, infrastructure owners, government agencies, USACE, and other defense‑adjacent customers.
• Recruit, evaluate, and help close exceptional talent across technical, operational, and commercial roles.
• Thrive at the pace and intensity of early‑stage startup life, including long days, and field hours when needed.

Requirements

• Exceptional operational judgment, intensity, and ownership.
• Experience leading strategy, operations, deployment, product, or company-building functions at a high-growth deep tech, robotics, aerospace, defense, infrastructure, or hardware startup.
• Ability to manage technical teams and make high-quality decisions around complex engineering and field operations, even without being the deepest technical expert in the room.
• Strong comfort with customers, investors, board members, vendors, and government / defense stakeholders.
• Willingness to work on‑site in Berkeley, CA.
• U.S. work authorization. We cannot sponsor H‑1B visas at this time.

Preferred Skills & Experience

• Prior experience as a VP / Director / Head of Strategy or Operations at a deep tech company.
• Prior experience as a COO, CPO, CTO, VP Ops, or GM experience at a Series B or later hardware startup.
• Experience deploying products that are hard to sell and hard to build.
• Founder or founder-level operating experience. Important to have seen 0->1.
• Strong finance, strategic planning, and fundraising fluency.

Ideal Archetype

• A high‑aptitude operator 3‑15 years into their career who has already scaled unusually fast. They need to be the smartest person at our company. Wicked, cunning, fluent in the dark arts, blurry in pictures.
• Someone who could plausibly be a founder, but who chooses our rocket ship over starting from zero.
• Has built or run something real in robotics, aerospace, defense, infrastructure, construction tech, or complex hardware.
• Can walk into a messy early‑stage company, create order, raise the bar, and make everyone more intense and effective.
• Has enough technical taste to manage engineers, enough commercial judgment to help sell, and enough operational force to keep the whole machine moving.
• Comes from a flagship deep tech company, an Elon-founded company, or a serious venture-backed hardware company. We are optimizing for aptitude, intensity, and company pedigree over title.