Executive Assistant (to the CEO)

Blacksmith; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 95,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Vision, and Dental insurance

401K match

Unlimited PTO

Annual offsite

Early-exercise stock options

Job summary

Blacksmith is seeking a proactive Executive Assistant to support the CEO as the company scales. You will own calendar management, communications, travel planning, and personal logistics, acting as the CEO’s right hand in a fast-paced hypergrowth startup.

The role blends operations with strategic support, requiring discretion and strong written communication. You’ll coordinate with investors, partners, and internal teams, keeping priorities clear and ensuring nothing drops after meetings.

Qualifications

• Proven experience supporting c-suite executives in fast-paced environments.
• Ability to anticipate needs and act without direction.
• Highest sense of urgency and delivery-focused.
• No ego approach and ownership of tasks.
• Strong prioritization instincts and judgement.
• Exceptional written communication, in the executive’s voice.

Responsibilities

• Own the CEO's calendar end to end, scheduling and prioritizing to protect focus time.
• Manage the CEO’s inbox and draft responses in their voice; coordinate with investors, board members, and partners.
• Plan and book domestic and international travel end to end and manage related logistics.
• Support San Francisco office operations, vendors, supplies, events, and general office tasks.

Skills

C-suite support

Executive calendar management

Discretion and judgment

Written communication

Tools

Google Workspace

Slack

Notion

Linear

Job description

About Blacksmith

• We started by building infrastructure to run CI workloads really fast. Our first product helps companies run GitHub Actions substantially faster and cheaper by owning and operating our own global fleet of bare-metal machines rather than renting generic cloud VMs.
• Today, we orchestrate tens of millions of Firecracker VMs each month, running CI for 3,000+ companies and hit ~$10M in ARR in less than 2 years. We’ve already more than 5X’ed revenue since the start of 2026.
• We operate thousands of bare-metal machines across multiple regions, regularly schedule 100k+ vCPUs concurrently, and run a petabyte-scale Ceph cluster that we manage ourselves.
• We’ve raised $58.5M from Seed to Series B, led by Google Ventures (GV) & Peak XV Capital, and we’re intentionally building a small, but exceptional team.
• Blacksmith was founded by a team with deep systems and scaling experience, including building search/ads infrastructure at Faire, and operating large distributed systems at Cockroach Labs. Our GTM is led by Jon Boyer, formerly Head of Sales at Zapier.
• We’re now extending the same CI infrastructure into a broader platform: running agent sandboxes at scale and building our own background coding agent on top of it.

This is a critical role, supporting the CEO through exceptional growth (we grew 12x last year & have already grown another 5x so far in 2026).

You’ll own the logistics & keep things running in a way that enables the CEO to fully focus on the success of the business.

This is a no egos role; you’ll preempt the need & jump into every task, acting as the CEO’s right hand as we hit this next phase of growth. In return, you’ll be entrusted with the most critical insights into running our business, a front seat at a true hypergrowth startup.

What you’ll own

Calendar and time

• Own the CEO's calendar end to end - scheduling, sequencing, protecting focus time, and making the hard prioritization calls about what earns a slot.
• Build and maintain a lightweight "CEO operating system": weekly priorities, open loops, follow-ups, reminders.
• Prep the CEO for every meeting - context, pre-reads, agendas, who's in the room and why.
• Capture action items and make sure nothing drops after the meeting ends.

Critical communications

• Manage the CEO's inbox: triage, prioritize, and draft responses in their voice.
• Serve as a trusted point of contact for investors, board members, design partners, customers, and press - with judgment about what needs the CEO and what you can handle yourself.
• Coordinate with EAs and chiefs of staff at partner, customer, and investor organizations.
• Handle sensitive information with complete discretion.

Travel and personal logistics

• Plan and book domestic and international travel end to end - flights, hotels, etc.
• Coordinate appointments, household services, purchases, deliveries, family travel, and other personal administration so they slot cleanly around professional priorities, and build systems that make the CEO's life admin run without their attention.
• Solve problems in real time when plans change.

Office and team

• Assist in the running of the San Francisco office day to day: vendors, supplies, food, space, the small things that make people want to come in.
• Help to coordinate offsites, team dinners, customer dinners, and networking events.
• Be the person who notices what's broken and fixes it before anyone asks.

What we’re looking for

• Proven experience supporting c-suite executives in the fastest paced environments. You have either supported the CEO of another hypergrowth startup, or you have supported Partners at the most demanding investment banking, private equity or venture capital firms.
• The ability to preempt a need and to fill that need, without explicit direction.
• The highest sense of urgency to all tasks; you are relentlessly focused on delivery.
• A no ego approach to your work. Whatever the task, you own it.
• Strong judgment and prioritization instincts: you know what matters most, and why.
• Exceptional written communication, including the ability to write clearly in someone else's voice.
• Comfort with ambiguity, shifting priorities, and a company that looks different every quarter.
• High EQ, real discretion, and obsessive attention to detail.
• Fluency with modern tools (Google Workspace, Slack, Notion, Linear) and a strong understanding of how a tech startup operates.
• Comfort supporting both professional and personal logistics.

This role may not be for you if

• You primarily think of an EA role as calendar management.
• You need every task to be clearly defined before beginning.
• You wait for direction when you can see that something needs to be done.
• You are uncomfortable handling personal logistics or operational tasks.
• You strongly prefer predictable days and fixed priorities.
• You care more about the perceived seniority of a task than whether it needs to get done.
• You want a remote or hybrid role.
• You don’t operate with a strong sense of urgency or move quickly when something matters.

Compensation and benefits

• Competitive base + equity.
• Medical, Vision, and Dental insurance.
• 401K match.
• Unlimited PTO.
• Annual offsite.
• Early-exercise stock options