Founder's Associate

Edge of Elsewhere; Needham (MA); On-site; USD 65,000 - 100,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity ownership

Medical, dental, vision

Retirement match

Flexible hours

Job summary

Midnight Mansion in Needham, MA is seeking a Founder’s Associate to partner with the CEO on technical, operational, and strategic initiatives. This full-time, in-person role requires hands-on execution, cross-functional collaboration, and comfort with ambiguity across design, fabrication, and research.

You will source hardware, evaluate vendors, help develop proposals, and drive proposals and procurement. The position offers meaningful equity, a competitive salary, flexible hours, and the chance

Qualifications

• Experience in operations, technical production, procurement, or startup work.
• Ability to work through ambiguity and independently solve problems.
• Comfort researching options, comparing and making recommendations.
• Technical curiosity and ability to learn unfamiliar subjects.
• Strong written communication and comfort with spreadsheets and documents.
• Ability to commute to Needham, MA or Somerville, MA as needed.

Responsibilities

• Take loosely defined problems from research through execution and completed work.
• Research technical, operational, and business questions and get up to speed quickly on unfamiliar subjects.
• Source and evaluate products, components, vendors, and services based on cost, capability, lead time, and fit.
• Work across engineering, design, fabrication, projects, and outside vendors to gather information and move work forward.
• Support proposals, scopes, estimates, procurement, and other priorities requiring research and attention to detail.
• Identify missing information, dependencies, contradictions, and risks; handle follow-ups and routine details needed to close loops.
• Take ownership of increasingly complex problems and initiatives, improving recurring processes and reducing routine decisions that need the CEO.

Job description

Midnight Mansion creates immersive, in-person experiences, bringing together design, engineering, fabrication, and creative technology. We’re looking for a Founder’s Associate to work closely with our CEO across technical projects, business operations, procurement, research, proposals, and whatever problems need to be figured out and moved forward.

The Role

This is a full-time, in-person role and requires the ability to commute to our working locations in Needham, MA and Somerville, MA as needed.

The core of this high-trust, high-agency role is multiplying what the CEO can get done by taking ownership of important work and its day-to-day details. You’ll be handed problems that may be incomplete, loosely defined, technical, operational, or entirely new. Your job is to quickly understand what we’re trying to accomplish, figure out what information is missing, identify the paths forward, and drive toward a useful result through hands-on execution and follow-through.

Some days you might research and source an unfamiliar piece of hardware, compare vendors, or work with our technical team to understand the tradeoffs between different approaches. Other days you might help develop a proposal, investigate a business question, improve an internal process, or take a half-formed idea and turn it into something the company can act on.

You will not always be given complete information or a step-by-step assignment. We’re looking for someone who is comfortable working through ambiguity, knows how to find answers, and can make a recommendation, act within agreed authority, and keep work moving.

As you build context and trust, you’ll grow into ownership of larger projects or parts of the business.

Who We’re Looking For

• Fast and detail-oriented. You absorb information quickly, stay accurate, and catch things others miss.
• Resourceful and independent. You can take an unclear problem, figure out what matters, and make meaningful progress without needing every step defined.
• Strong practical judgment. You can lay out the options, understand the tradeoffs, and recommend a path forward.
• Technically curious. You don’t need to be an engineer, but you’re willing to learn how unfamiliar systems work, read relevant documentation, and know when to involve a specialist.
• Business-minded. You consider cost, time, risk, quality, and practicality alongside the ideal solution.
• Clear, organized, and trustworthy. You turn messy information into concise actions, keep people informed, and handle sensitive information with discretion.

Success in this role means increasingly being able to take an incomplete problem off someone else’s plate and return with it understood, organized, and meaningfully closer to solved.

Responsibilities

• Take loosely defined problems from research and recommendations through hands-on execution and completed work.
• Research technical, operational, and business questions and get up to speed quickly on unfamiliar subjects.
• Source and evaluate products, components, vendors, and services based on cost, capability, lead time, and fit.
• Work across engineering, design, fabrication, projects, and outside vendors to gather information and move work forward.
• Support proposals, scopes, estimates, procurement, and other company priorities requiring research and attention to detail.
• Identify missing information, dependencies, contradictions, and risks; handle the follow-ups and routine details needed to close loops.
• Take ownership of increasingly complex problems and initiatives, improving recurring processes and reducing routine decisions that need the CEO.

Qualifications

• Experience in a role involving some combination of operations, technical production, procurement, research, project delivery, fabrication, consulting, or startup work.
• Strong examples of independently working through ambiguous or unfamiliar problems.
• Comfort researching, comparing options, and making recommendations.
• Technical curiosity and demonstrated ability to learn unfamiliar subjects. Familiarity with how things get designed, sourced, built, or installed is helpful; expertise across these areas is not required.
• Strong written communication and comfort with spreadsheets, shared documents, and learning unfamiliar tools. Coding, APIs, or financial models may be useful tools for particular tasks, not prerequisites for the role.
• Ability to commute to our studio in Needham, MA or our venue in Somerville, MA as needed.

We care more about how you think and operate than checking every box above. You will encounter things you have never worked on before. What matters is being able to get up to speed quickly, find the right information or people, and make useful progress.

• $65,000–$100,000 annual salary, commensurate with experience and demonstrated ability.
• Meaningful equity ownership. Equity is a core part of the compensation for this role, not a token perk. We are intentionally looking for someone who wants to help build Midnight Mansion and participate meaningfully in the value they help create.
• Highly flexible work hours.
• Medical, vision, and dental coverage.
• Retirement savings plan with employer match.