Executive Assistant

Aurelius Systems

San Francisco (CA)

On-site

USD 70,000 - 110,000

Full time

14 days+

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Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Health coverage (United Health Care)

Field test travel

Lunches & snacks

E-bike stipend

Direct leadership access

Job summary

Aurelius Systems seeks a Founder's Associate to work directly with the founders and leadership, owning systems and coordination to move the company faster. You’ll bring order to ambiguity, close loops quickly, and be the trusted owner for cross‑functional work beyond calendar management.

Initially you’ll cover scheduling, travel, internal tooling, vendor management, and office coordination; over 6–12 months the role diversifies as we scale.

Qualifications

2–5 years in founder's associate or BizOps roles.
Exceptional organizational horsepower.
Ability to turn vague problems into a plan.
Startup mindset: prefer simple solutions.
Clear, proactive communicator across teams.
Self-directed with ownership attitude.
Comfortable with ambiguity in a fast-paced startup.

Responsibilities

Schedule and coordinate across the organization for the CEO and CTO.
Manage travel and demos logistics and site visits.
Admin tooling and SaaS administration, provisioning and access.
Vendor and office coordination: contracts and renewals.
Develop and maintain internal documentation and knowledge bases.
Visitor coordination including NDA and site visits logistics.
Support office transition and onboarding as we scale.
Lead cross-functional projects and high-priority tasks.

Skills

Founder's Associate experience

Operations mindset

Organizational skills

Judgment

Startup mindset

Clear communication

Proactive problem solving

Ambiguity tolerance

Education

No degree required

Job description

Aurelius Systems is a VC backed defense tech startup building autonomous, edge deployed directed energy systems for counter-UAS. We build laser weapons to shoot down drones.

We're a small team of engineers, former US military operators, and subject matter experts scaling America's directed energy dominance. The first cost effective, reliable and robust laser weapon system.

Our namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate, small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind the unachievable.

In addition to our San Francisco lab, we've opened a Detroit manufacturing hub and we field test weekly on our own 400-acre private range.

The Role and Impact:

We need a Found'er's Associate to work directly alongside our founders and leadership team, owning the systems and coordination that make the whole company move faster. You'll bring structure to ambiguity, close loops quickly, and become the person everyone trusts to just handle it.

This is not a pure Executive Assistant role. It includes scheduling and travel, but it goes well beyond calendaring into internal tools, documentation, vendor management, office coordination, and the high-priority cross‑functional work that doesn't sit neatly with any one team.

Where our Operations Specialist owns the hardware floor and physical operations, you own the software, systems, and operating rhythm of the company. Early on you'll cover for each other; over the next 6–12 months the roles diverge as we scale.

What You'll Own:

Executive and team scheduling, calendaring, and meeting coordination across the organization, including for the CEO and CTO
Travel and hotel booking for the team and the logistics behind demos, off‑sites, and visits
Internal tooling and SaaS administration, including provisioning, renewals, and access
Vendor and office coordination on the business side: contracts, renewals, follow‑ups
Internal documentation and knowledge bases that stay current and findable
Visitor coordination on the admin side, including NDA documentation and scheduling for site visits
Office transition and onboarding logistics as we scale into the new space
Special projects and cross‑functional execution, and the messy, high-priority things that need an owner

What We're Looking For:

2–5 years in a founder's associate, business operations, chief of staff‑adjacent, consulting, banking, or high‑output generalist role. Military S‑1, adjutant, or admin backgrounds welcome.
Exceptional organizational horsepower: comfortable holding many threads at once and bringing structure to ambiguity.
Strong judgment. You can take a vague problem and turn it into a plan without being handed one.
Startup mindset: bias toward the simple thing that works today over the enterprise tool that deploys next quarter.
Direct, clear, trusted communicator who works cleanly across teams and with leadership.
Proactive problem‑solver who closes loops without being chased.
Comfortable with ambiguity in an early‑stage company still figuring out its processes.

Where you probably come from:

A founder's associate or BizOps seat at an early‑stage startup, consulting or banking where you learned to structure problems fast, or a military admin or personnel role where you ran the unit's systems and kept everything tight.

We want to talk if:

You're the person everyone already comes to when they need something solved, scheduled, or figured out. You see a broken process and fix it instead of filing a ticket. When a founder calls at 10pm because something urgent came up, you want to be the one who answers.

Not a fit if:

You want a pure EA or calendar‑only role, you're looking for hardware or facilities work (that's our Operations Specialist), you default to "what software should we buy" before "what can I build in an hour," or you wait for written process before you'll act.

Nice to Haves:

Experience at a startup or high‑growth tech company
Familiarity with project management tools
Veteran with military admin, personnel, or S‑1 background
Experience administering SaaS stacks and access controls

Education:

No degree required. Proof matters here.

How You Operate:

Extreme bias for action. You'd rather solve it now than schedule a meeting about it.
You handle problems before they hit anyone's inbox.
Comfortable with ambiguity and fast iteration in a startup environment.
Clear communicator across the team, leadership, and vendors.
Self‑directed. You identify what needs to happen next and do it without being told.

Why Join Aurelius Systems:

Build more in 1 month than most people build in 1 year. We field test weekly. Your work makes the whole team faster.
Work directly with the founders. At ~10 engineers, there are no layers between you and the people running the company.
Work on a problem that actually matters. Small, cheap drones are changing warfare. Our laser systems are the asymmetric answer with infinite magazine, near‑zero cost per shot, scalable to every base, border, facility, and truck.
Join the densest defense startup ecosystem in the country. California is where the next generation of defense companies are being built.

How We Work:

We work Monday through Friday, 9 to 6, most Saturdays, and some evenings, although not constant. Supporting the whole company across engineering, operations, and leadership is the core of this role. We don't manufacture intensity for show; the pace is real because the work is real.