Founding Strategy & Operations Generalist

Trysela; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision

401(k) match

Unlimited PTO

Hybrid in-office SF

Job summary

Sela is seeking a founding strategy and operations generalist to own hiring strategy, target candidates, and how we reach them. You’ll build AI tools to automate recruiting and scale impact, while helping shape future business areas such as product, pricing, or finance.

You’ll join a fast-paced, venture-backed startup committed to building transformative AI-powered lending solutions. You’ll report to the CEO and help recruit a high-caliber team, working four days a week in the San Francisco

Qualifications

• 2–4 years out of school, spent at a top consulting firm, in finance, or in an operating role at a fast-paced, venture-backed startup
• Hungry and high-agency — you don't wait for instructions
• Intellectually curious and fast to learn
• Exceptional with people
• Genuinely fluent with AI tools
• Excited about working four days a week in office in San Francisco

Responsibilities

• Founding Strategy & Operations: own hiring strategy and who we should target, how we reach them, how we evaluate and close top talent
• Automation: build AI tools and agents to handle recruiting tasks and scale impact
• Whatever's next: contribute to new revenue motions, pricing, or finance as needed

Job description

We're building the future of consumer finance.

LLMs are trained to follow the human they're talking to. Ours has to lead: read intent and tone, build trust, and guide complex conversations toward an outcome. Doing that naturally, responsibly, and at production scale requires systems frontier models weren't built to provide. That's what we're building.

Guiding borrowers through high-stakes financial decisions across hundreds of thousands of calls a day is not easy. Here's what you'd actually be building.

01 An LLM That Leads, Not Follows

• Models are trained to be agreeable. Ours has to guide the conversation.
• Read intent and tone, adapt in real time, and move a complex decision forward
• A research-flavored problem the labs aren’t optimizing for

02 Real-Time, Non-Deterministic

• What sounds like one agent is a swarm of specialists handing off mid-call
• We rewrite the agent’s context, tools, and instructions between turns
• All inside a few hundred milliseconds, every single turn

03 Testing Things With No Right Answer

• Conversations aren’t functions that return true or false
• Turn-level evals on real moments, plus full end-to-end simulations
• Simulated callers, LLM-as-judge, and metrics per behavior

04 Real People, Real Responsibility

• People tell our agents genuinely personal things. That is not abstract.
• Security and privacy are design constraints, not a checkbox
• Bounded autonomy - unsafe actions simply don't exist for the agent

How We Hire

This might sound simple but it is rigorously enforced. Our employees are the soul of the company and we both demand and reward success.

01 Intelligence

Uncommonly bright. You can hold a messy problem in your head and make it simpler, approach problems from creative angles, and navigate ambiguous and novel situations with clarity and speed.

02 Communication

Writing, thinking, and exchanging views is at the heart of our decision making process. We judge by the quality of the idea and the evidence, not the pedigree of the person who is sharing it.

03 Team player

Everyone's contributions must be impressive and significant, but they also must be integral to the success of the company. A team victory rewards all.

Culture

What We Keep Coming Back To

These three values govern how we work.

01 A+ bots, or don't ship

We insist on human-level fluency. Every conversation should feel natural, capable, and polished.

02 Own a large piece

Our product has lots of surface area and we expect each of our employees to own a large part of it. Your time is your own; self-starters and problem solvers will be celebrated.

03 This is supposed to be fun

We work hard and we don't take ourselves too seriously. The intensity and velocity are infectious.

The Practical Stuff

Generous where it counts: top-of-market health, early equity, four days in SF, and dinner on us.

01 Medical

Top-of-market health coverage for you and your dependents.

02 Dental & Vision

Comprehensive dental and vision coverage for you and your dependents.

03 401(k) Matching

A top-of-market employer match on your retirement contributions.

04 Meaningful Equity

Real ownership in what we're building, granted at an early stage.

05 Top Talent, Top Pay

We hire exceptional people to build together in San Francisco, and pay accordingly.

06 Unlimited PTO

Take the time you need. We mean it - please actually use it.

07 Snacks & Dinner

Snacks around the office, and dinner on us.

08 Hybrid In Office

Four days a week together in SF, with a flexible remote day on Wednesdays.

Open Roles

Come Work Here

We're hiring people who can own a large piece and still make the whole better. The product is already in market, the problems are hard, and the team is still small enough that you'll change what we build.

Founding Strategy & Operations Generalist

Location

Employment Type

Full time

Location Type

On-site

Department

Operations

ABOUT SELA

Sela is the market leading AI voice agent for mortgage lenders. Since we started in mid 2024, we have since signed 6 of the 10 largest independent mortgage banks in the US as enterprise customers. We went from ~$0 to $13M annualized revenue over the past 20 months, and we currently make around 600k calls a day. Product-market fit is a crazy feeling, and the next 12 months will be even crazier.

We're far and away the market leader in our space. In the very near future, most mortgages will be originated by AI; we are in the best position of anyone in the market to do it. If we're successful, we will eventually make everyone's mortgage 1% cheaper, and we will make an enduring and valuable company along the way.

We've raised $21M across our Seed and Series A from Emergence and Costanoa.

THE ROLE

You’ll be the first strategy and operations hire at Sela. You’ll report to the CEO and get pointed at whatever the hardest problem in the company is at the time.

Right now that's hiring. We're tripling the team in a year without lowering the bar, which makes recruiting the highest-leverage system we have. You’ll own who we should be targeting, how we reach them, how we evaluate them quickly and fairly, how we close the ones we want.

From there you’ll take on more of the business. Which parts depends on what we need and what you’re drawn to — sales, product, finance, people.

WHAT YOU'LL OWN

Hiring Strategy. Who are the right candidates? How do we get them in the door? How do we evaluate candidates fairly and efficiently? How do we sell and close top talent?

Automation. You’ll build AI tools and agents to take as much of this off humans as possible, with as many tokens as you can spend and engineering support when you need it. If you like the idea of figuring out how to get an agent to do 80% of your job so you can go solve the next problem, you’ll like it here.

Whatever's next. A new revenue motion, a pricing model, a finance function. The scope of this role is set by how much you can handle.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

2–4 years out of school, spent at a top consulting firm, in finance, or in an operating role at a fast-paced, venture-backed startup

Hungry and high-agency. You don't wait for instructions. You see what needs to happen, figure out how to do it, and make it happen.

Intellectually curious and fast to learn. You want to understand how a business actually works and you pick up new domains quickly.

Must-haves:

Exceptional with people. Everyone who talks to you should come away thinking more of Sela, whether or not we hire them.

Genuinely fluent with AI tools. Not just enthusiastic — you already use them every day and you've built something yourself.

Excited about working four days a week in office in San Francisco

BENEFITS

Top-of-market medical, dental, and vision coverage for you and your dependents

401(k) with a top-of-market employer match

Unlimited PTO

Hybrid in-office schedule: four days a week together in SF, with a flexible remote day on Wednesdays