Strategic Chief of Staff — Operations & Execution

Fervo Energy; Houston (TX); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision plan

401(k) plan with company match

Hybrid schedule in the office

Job summary

Fervo Energy is seeking a Chief of Staff to the VP of Operations to extend leadership across Engineering, O&M, Production Engineering, and Commissioning. You will manage AFEs, budgets, change orders, and monthly spend, while driving cross-functional meetings and ensuring decision-ready deliverables.

You will coordinate with Engineering, Finance, HSSE, and external partners, build cost models, and develop executive-ready reporting and presentations.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in an Engineering discipline (non-engineers will be considered if relevant experience can be demonstrated)
• 10+ years of experience in an engineering, finance, consulting, data science or operations role — preferably in the energy, oil & gas, or industrial sector
• Demonstrated experience with project financial tracking: AFEs, budgets, change orders, vendor cost reconciliation, accruals, and variance analysis
• Strong fluency reading and synthesizing engineering and construction documentation — P&IDs, schedules, drawings, vendor scope packages, commissioning procedures
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; able to engage credibly with senior executives and field personnel alike

Responsibilities

• Serve as a direct extension of the VP of Operations, representing the leader in forums they cannot attend and driving workstreams that require senior coverage
• Engage with full authority and accountability to make decisions on the leader’s behalf, keeping the full portfolio aligned, moving, and decision-ready
• Anticipate slipping workstreams and overdue deliverables before being asked, surfacing causes and solutions proactively
• Interface daily with Engineering, Commissioning, Production Engineering, O&M, HSSE, Supply Chain, and Finance to keep workstreams aligned and unblocked
• Coordinate with external partners — OEMs, owner’s engineers, and vendor field service personnel — on behalf of Fervo leadership
• Run cross-functional meetings: set agendas, drive decisions, capture action items, and follow them through to closure
• Translate between disciplines so that engineering, operations, finance, and executives are working from the same picture
• Own ongoing tracking of CapEx and OpEx budgets, AFEs, and actuals across owned workstreams; build and maintain monthly spend forecasts and variance analyses
• Develop and refine cost models for Cape Station and follow-on plants — CapEx, OpEx, and lifecycle — in support of investment-grade forecasting and project decision-making
• Manage vendor purchase orders, invoices, and accruals against scope and progress; flag commercial risk before it becomes a dispute
• Prepare executive budget summaries, AFE narratives, and variance commentary that stand up to scrutiny from the ELT, the board, and external stakeholders
• Track schedule, cost, and risk metrics across owned workstreams; produce the data and analysis leadership uses to make decisions
• Maintain risk registers, RAG status reports, and 2-, 4-, and 8-week look-aheads. When a metric goes red, you bring a recovery plan, not a status update
• Build executive-facing PowerPoint deliverables, briefing memos, and one-page summaries — clear, dense, and decision-ready
• Identify duplicated effort, redundant approvals, and friction in current workflows; eliminate the unnecessary first, then simplify what remains
• Build reusable templates, trackers, and standard operating procedures so that each successive plant begins with the accumulated advantage of those that came before it
• Codify what works into Fervo’s playbook for plant delivery; treat every Cape Station deliverable as reusable IP for the next site
• Question every inherited requirement — trace it to its source, and if no rationale can be established, treat it as a candidate for elimination
• Integrate AI tools into daily workflows to drive efficiency across reporting, cost tracking, scheduling, and cross-functional coordination; model their use for the broader operations team
• Identify and lead special initiatives that fall outside existing functional lanes — process redesign, technology adoption, capability-building — and drive them to completion with the same ownership expected of core workstreams
• Draft executive communications, ELT QBR content, board materials, and regulatory submissions on behalf of leadership
• Liaise with internal stakeholders (Engineering, Commissioning, Operations, Finance, HSSE, ELT) and external (OEMs, regulators, owner’s engineers) with discretion and judgment
• Translate field reality into reporting that is concise enough for an executive and actionable enough for a craft foreman

Skills

Project coordination

Engineering knowledge

Communication skills

Leadership support

Education

Bachelor’s degree in engineering

Tools

Primavera P6

SmartPlant

Bluebeam

EDMS

Job description

Fervo Energy is seeking a Chief of Staff to the VP of Operations to extend leadership across Engineering, O&M, Production Engineering, and Commissioning. You will manage AFEs, budgets, change orders, and monthly spend, while driving cross-functional meetings and ensuring decision-ready deliverables.

You will coordinate with Engineering, Finance, HSSE, and external partners, build cost models, and develop executive-ready reporting and presentations.