Strategy & Business Operations

Arena Physica; New York (NY); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare benefits

401(k)

Unlimited PTO

Lunch stipend

Relocation assistance

Job summary

Arena Physica is seeking a founding member of the Strategy & Business Operations team to own cross-functional challenges from finance to operations and pricing. You will move between domains as priorities shift, with autonomy to shape initiatives and drive impact across the company.

You’ll report to the COO, influence strategy, and execute with discipline. Expect a dynamic role balancing internal buildouts and external deployments, with frequent collaboration across leadership.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of professional experience in investment banking, management consulting, or a high-growth startup with an interest in hardware.
• High bar for quality, willingness to work long hours on complex problems.
• Strong written and verbal communication with storytelling abilities.
• Track record of creative problem solving and owning impact at scale.
• Enthusiastic, scrappy, and motivated to win despite odds.

Responsibilities

• Own special projects end to end across finance, operations, GTM, and recruiting with full autonomy.
• Identify top challenges and build scalable systems and playbooks.
• Build deep fluency in the company’s technology, customers, and economics to support diverse projects.
• Travel domestically and internationally up to 30% of time.
• Work in person at Arena Physica’s NYC HQ when not traveling.

Job description

Who we are

Arena Physica is on a mission to accelerate hardware innovation that powers human progress. Our name is inspired by Theodore Roosevelt’s ‘Citizenship in a Republic’ speech. To us, entering the Arena means committing fully and accepting the risk of failure in pursuit of an audacious, worthy cause. We believe the future belongs to those brave enough to build it.

Our team of 50 combines AI engineering and applied physics expertise with deep experience in enterprise deployments. We’re headquartered in NYC with presences in San Francisco and Los Angeles, backed by ~$90M from Initialized, Founders Fund, Goldcrest Capital, Fifth Down Capital, and Shield Capital.

If you’re ready to do the most important work of your career, join us in the Arena.

What we do

At Arena Physica, we’re building electromagnetic superintelligence. Our AI platform Atlas operationalizes physics-grounded intelligence to verify, debug, and optimize hardware across its lifecycle. Atlas is already trusted globally by the world’s most advanced hardware companies, including AMD, Anduril, and Bausch & Lomb, for applications across R&D, integration testing, production assembly, and field repair.

About the role

As a founding member of our Strategy & Business Operations team, you will be the ultimate generalist, diving into the company’s most pressing challenges. You’ll wear multiple hats, jumping into internal and external problems, and own problems end to end.

On fast timelines, you’ll move between domains as the company’s priorities shift: one week you might be building the financial model for a new hardware program, the next you’re standing up the operational backbone for a customer deployment and creating a new pricing model.

In this role, you’ll report to the COO and work closely with leaders across the executive team. You’ll be trusted to operate with significant autonomy, to make recommendations that influence company strategy, and to follow through on the execution to makes those strategies real.

How you will contribute

• Own special projects end to end – take on projects across every domain of the company (i.e., finance, operations, GTM, recruiting) with full autonomy, driving each from problem investigation to successful execution
• Drive the highest-leverage work – proactively identify the top challenges, and build the systems and processes to solve them at scale, creating new playbooks from scratch
• Build deep company fluency – deeply embed in the company’s technology, customers, economics, and organization and be an expert across our processes so you can support any project
• Travel domestically and internationally (up to 30% of your time)
• Work in person at Arena Physica’s NYC HQ when not traveling

You have

• 3+ years of professional experience, ideally in investment banking, management consulting, or a high-growth startup, with a deep interest or hands-on experience in hardware
• An incredibly high bar for quality, with deep intensity and drive — this role will be demanding and require long hours to solve complex problems
• Strong written and verbal communication & storytelling — you can move fluidly from investor-ready financial models to polished customer presentations, communicating clearly and concisely to a wide variety of stakeholders
• A track record of creative problem solving and owning impact at scale – you have a reputation for making magic happen
• A deep scrappiness and intrinsic desire to win despite the odds

Benefits & Perks Include:

• 100% of the monthly premiums covered with Aetna medical vision, and dental insurance for you and your dependents
• 401(k) Retirement Plan
• Unlimited PTO
• Lunch every day from local restaurants via Sharebite
• Relocation support provided