Strategy & Operations, Founder's Office

Laminar; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 90,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental, Vision

Life Insurance

Disability

401k with matching

Equity

Salary and bonus

Transportation benefit

Health & Wellness

Greentown Labs access

Job summary

Laminar is seeking a hands-on operator to work directly with the founders to decide where to invest and build the capabilities that move toward $100M in revenue. You’ll translate priorities into operating plans, budgets, and hiring decisions grounded in deployment economics.

You’ll own strategic initiatives, from expert advisory offerings to new markets and partnerships, develop financial models and performance reporting, and partner on fundraising materials and due diligence.

Qualifications

• Experience in startup operations, consulting, finance, or investing.
• Analytically strong; able to work across technical and commercial teams.
• Willing to take responsibility through execution.

Responsibilities

• Turn company priorities into operating plans, budgets, and hiring decisions grounded in deployment economics.
• Build and launch strategic initiatives, from expert-advisory offerings to new markets and partnerships.
• Develop financial models and performance reporting that guide resource allocation.
• Partner with the founders on fundraising strategy, investor materials, and diligence.
• Recruit initial teams and lead initiatives until they have a permanent owner.

Skills

Startup operations

Financial modeling

Cross-functional collaboration

Analytical mindset

Execution accountability

Fundraising support

Job description

Machines learned to understand language. We’re teaching them to understand matter.

Forty percent of global manufacturing happens through physical and chemical processes inside pipes, tanks, and reactors. Despite decades of industrial automation, much of what happens inside them remains remarkably invisible. Manufacturing is the most ubiquitous and foundational sector in global economy, yet the way factories are fundamentally run have used the same control philosophies, manual operations, and legacy software for the past 60 years.

Laminar deploys state-of-the-art patented sensors and edge hardware directly into live production environments, generating data that didn’t previously exist to build foundation models deployed in factory floors that understand chemistry, composition, quality, and material state in real time. We use that understanding to run autonomy and rethink how the product is made.

The last generation of industrial automation taught machines to execute instructions reliably. The next will teach them to understand the processes they control and run autonomously, adaptively, and agentically: higher quality, safety, more efficiently, sustainably, and productively.

That future is already taking shape. Today, Laminar works with 7 of the world’s 10 largest food and beverage manufacturers and operates across hundreds of factories globally across six continents. Our systems have materially reduced waste, cut manufacturing downtime, saved water, chemicals, energy, and helped prevent safety and quality failures. Our technology has gained international recognition, from being selected as a 2026 World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, Gold 2026 Edison Award, Unilever Startup of the Year, to Innovator Awards by both Coca-Cola and AB InBev, and more.

We are backed by tier‑one investors in physical AI to make intelligent, self‑improving production the new standard for industry.

Join us to build what makes matter intelligible, and the intelligible controllable.

The Role

Work directly with Laminar’s founders to decide where we invest and build the capabilities that take us toward $100M in revenue. You’ll combine financial judgment with hands‑on execution, taking important initiatives from an initial idea to a functioning part of the business.

What You Will Own

• Turn company priorities into operating plans, budgets, and hiring decisions grounded in deployment economics
• Build and launch strategic initiatives, from an expert‑advisory offering to new markets and partnerships
• Develop financial models and performance reporting that guide resource allocation
• Partner with the founders on fundraising strategy, investor materials, and diligence
• Recruit initial teams and lead initiatives until they have a permanent owner

What You’ll Bring

Experience in startup operations, consulting, finance, or investing, with evidence that you’ve built something and made it work. You’re analytically strong, comfortable working across technical and commercial teams, and willing to take responsibility through execution.

Your opportunity

Build a broad operating mandate, with room to lead a function or business as Laminar grows.

Benefits

• Direct impact on product and culture.
• Comprehensive benefits package including Medical, Dental, Vision, Life Insurance, Disability, Transportation benefit, Health and Wellness benefit, and more.
• 401k plan with employer matching
• Equity
• Competitive salary and bonus opportunities.
• Dynamic and inclusive work environment.
• Opportunities for growth and professional development.
• Access to Greentown Labs' extensive network of cleantech startups.
• Transportation benefit for your commute
• A team that celebrates together from rooftop lunches, ping pong matches, Lunch & Learns, and regular team events

Learn How We Think

• Learn about our startup journey: Our Journey
• How we're combating climate change: AI-Powered Climate Tech
• Customer story: Unilever uses Laminar precision automation to cut time & water usage

$90,000 - $200,000 a year

We’re also proud to offer equity in our fast-growing startup and one of the most comprehensive benefits packages among startups at our stage. Laminar pays 100% of the individual health insurance premium for HMO medical, vision, and dental, offers flexible PTO, a $90/month transportation benefit, a $65/month health and wellness benefit, FSA, 12 company-paid holidays, an employer‑matching 401(k) (unheard of at this stage!), and Greentown Labs membership, among other valuable resources. (*subject to change)

There are many easier places to work on AI. Laminar is for people who want the hardest version of their discipline. Models here must survive contact with physics. Hardware must survive years of continuous industrial operation. Software must integrate with machinery built decades ago. Everything we build ultimately has to work on a factory floor.

We believe exceptional people should be given exceptional amounts of ownership. At Laminar, you will have the context to form your own view, the permission to challenge ours, and the resources to pursue the right answers, whatever technical or organizational boundaries stand in the way. There are few layers between identifying something important and changing it.

We’re fortunate to work with a small polymathic team of hardware and software engineers, chemists, AI researchers, factory operators, and go‑to‑market wizards who are unusually capable, curious, rigorous, ambitious, and low‑ego. If that sounds like you, we’d love to meet you.

Our Interview Process

1. Phone screen with Laminar HR/Recruiter (15-20 minutes)

2. Intro call with Hiring Manager (30 minutes)

3. On-site interview, overview of tech, and interview/presentation with the Hiring Manager and a few team members. Depending on the role, a skills exercise that should take no longer than an hour to prep, would be sent ahead of time. We record your skills exercise to share with any team members who could not join the interview and/or with Founder's ahead of their Founder's Interview. If you are not local, we can conduct this virtually.

4. Finalists for Full-Time positions will have a Founder's Interview in‑person

Final steps:

Two professional references are requested, ideally one from your current organization and one who served as your Manager

If an Offer Letter is extended, a Background check is conducted

* Please ensure you add the runlaminar.com domain to your safe senders list to ensure you receive our communications.