Chief of Staff

Role Overview

The Chief of Staff/Founders Office role works directly with the CEO to drive strategy, planning, reviews, cross-functional program management, and new initiatives with BukuWarung across markets, products or organization focused.

We believe that the winners in the future will be AI native - operating at a speed and lean headcount that was previously impossible. This role will sit at the centre of how BukuWarung will design the Operating System and Information Architecture that enables us to execute faster and better on outcomes and decisions.

This role will sit at the centre of how the company sets priorities and delivers on them, with a focus on key functions (Marketing, Finance & People). Key metrics that the individual will be measured on are 1) Time to market of our products and 2) Revenue per employee.

Key Responsibilities

1. Designing The Company Operating System (Planning, Info Architecture & Reviews)

• Design and run the company-wide operating cadence with CEO:

Strategy sessions with Management & Leaders: Define the Why, What and How of the companys path for the next 2 and 5 years. Own the structure and execution of these sessions.

Bi-Annual Planning sessions: Own the planning sessions to make sure everyone is aligned with the timeline and deliverables. Hold leaders accountable on quality of outcomes, run the planning efficiently and conduct feedback sessions to improve the quality of planning. Be actively involved in identifying interdependencies between business, product and functions, to call out risks of execution failure.

Monthly Reviews: Ensure that priorities are aligned during planning and are being met through rigorous monthly reviews. Work with leaders pre and post the review sessions, to make sure expectations are met.

• Information Architecture: Design and implement the organization's information architecture to ensure knowledge flows efficiently and leaders have the data they need to decide quickly. This will be all the documentation generated by the company across all functions - building the context layer that enables agents to operate
• Efficiency Metrics: Establish and track company-wide benchmarks to make sure that we are meeting org goals to deliver business goals

2. AI Adoption and Functional Gaps

• AI-First Transition: Work directly with the CEO on driving AI adoption across every function of the company. Build first principles approach of problem solving and escalation in each function so that we maintain high productivity thresholds. Conceptualize and implement the agent framework for the organization, including building and deploying AI agents to automate workflows
• Identifying Gaps: Work with functional leads to identify gaps in processes or team culture and solve hard problems that don't have a clear home. Ensure that individual functional efficiency is consistently high, repeatedly
• Culture of Execution: Foster a culture that moves at high velocity, diagnosing bottlenecks in decision-making or tooling and fixing them at the root

3. Critical Projects & Success Metrics

• Launch & Scale: Act as the central owner for mission-critical projects, such as launching a new product, entering a new market, or managing large-scale company changes
• Success Measurement: Your success in this role will be measured primarily by two key metrics: Time-to-Market (for key launches) and Revenue per Employee (as a measure of organizational efficiency)
• Cross-Functional Unblocking: Be responsible for identifying cross dependencies early and removing them through alignment among leaders to meet committed deadlines

4. People, Talent & Culture

• High-Stakes Hiring: Go deep on the hiring process for leadership and key roles to ensure we are closing the right talent for our next phase of growth
• Org Design: Serve as a thought partner to the CEO on org design and sequencing of "big bets" as we grow. Examples: These could be on an existing product localization for a new market or research and risk modelling for a new market
• High Intent & Performance Culture: Work with the CEO to build a culture of strong feedback loops and high intent, which eventually drives high performance outcomes

The Way Forward

The role is an 18 to 24 month path to a Tier 1 leadership position. A successful candidate in this role will either:

• Take on a Business or Functional Head position at BukuWarung
• Go on to build their own venture, using the skills picked up with the role

Qualifications Must-Have

• Experience: 5–9 years in a Founders Office, Strategy, or BizOps role in a fast-paced tech startup, or top-tier management consulting
• Execution Track Record: Proven ability to own complex, cross-functional programs (Tech + Business) from end-to-end
• First-Principles Thinking: You are comfortable rethinking how planning and execution should work in an AI-first world. You are also able to think about second and third-order consequences of decisions or events or actions
• Communication: Highly concise written and verbal communication, capable of influencing senior stakeholders without formal authority
• Builder Mindset: High sense of ownership; you are willing to do the unglamorous work to make things happen. A high attention to detail and process quality without over-engineering

Nice-to-Have

• Experience working closely with Product & Engineering teams; familiarity with product development and agile practices
• Experience with internal tools, CRMs, planning or knowledge systems, ideally including AI-powered workflows
• Exposure to fintech/payments/ SME products and Southeast Asia markets

Personal Attributes

• Deeply excited by tech and AI-first ways of running a company, not just manual process policing
• Low-ego, high-ambition & ownership, willingness to take risk, attention to detail; comfortable working behind the scenes with leadership and management to deliver outcomes
• Able to bring diverse viewpoints together, resolve conflicts if needed and keep people aligned on what is important

Originally posted on Himalayas