ABOUT OPAQUE SYSTEMS, INC.

What we do

Opaque is the confidential AI platform unlocking sensitive data to securely accelerate AI into production. Created by world-renowned researchers at the Berkeley RISELab, Opaque’s user-friendly platform empowers organizations to run cloud-scale, general purpose AI workloads on encrypted data. Opaque supports popular languages and frameworks for AI, including Python and Spark, and enables governed data sharing with cryptographic verification of privacy and sovereignty. Opaque customers deploy high-performance AI faster and eliminate the tradeoff between innovation and security. 

Who we are

At Opaque, we cultivate an effective work culture grounded in kindness, customer-centricity, and continuous improvement. By fostering innovation, inclusivity, and excellence, we attract top talent and set industry standards, leading to widespread adoption and trust in AI technologies that keep data private and sovereign.

Benefits

• Premier health coverage: We cover medical, dental, and vision insurance premiums for you and any dependents - along with basic life insurance and LTD. We also offer FSA, HSA, and other voluntary insurance programs (Life, Accident, Illness, Hospital).
• Equity incentives: We offer an employee stock option plan to ensure you have a stake in our company's success.
• Flexible PTO: We support positive work-life balance and encourage you to take time away to refresh on your own terms.
• Retirement planning: 401K plans (both Roth and Traditional).
• Flexible work: We are a remote-first company and offer a home-office equipment setup stipend to support your best work.
• Mental health: Free access to Spring Health for therapy, wellness exercises, and mental health coaching.
• Corporate discount program: Free access to Working Advantage for corporate discounts on a variety of products, services, and experiences. 

ABOUT THIS JOB

We’re hiring a high-impact Chief of Staff / Executive Operations leader to act as a strategic force multiplier, trusted partner, and do-it-all Swiss army knife for our CEO and executive team. This isn’t a support or assistant role—it’s a high-trust, high-leverage position at the heart of company strategy and execution. You’ll partner closely with the CEO to drive clarity, amplify executive effectiveness, and scale operational excellence across the business. As a key connector across Product, Engineering, GTM, and Operations, you’ll be responsible for turning strategic intent into coordinated, cross-functional action. This position is central to how we run the company and make decisions at speed and scale.

In this role, you’ll act as a proxy for the CEO in critical meetings, shape and deliver messaging for board members, strategic customers, and partners, and advance key initiatives in close partnership with our CMO, CTO, and VP of Engineering. You’ll help run flagship executive programs—such as our AI Executive Salon and Confidential Computing Summit—while also managing internal operating rhythms and communications. Your success will come from the ability to synthesize complexity into clarity, create momentum around strategic priorities, and keep the entire leadership team tightly aligned. This is a front-line operator role, designed for someone who moves fast, sees around corners, and makes the company sharper just by being in the room.

Structured as a 12–18 month “tour of duty,” this role is a career accelerator for future founders, GMs, or VPs of Ops. Inspired by Matt Mochary’s onboarding philosophy and the track records of standout Chiefs of Staff like Regina Gerbeaux, we begin with 30–60 days of deep shadowing to build context, followed by increasing responsibility and autonomy. This role is ideal for someone who thrives in ambiguity, operates with a high degree of ownership, and is excited to help scale a company at the frontier of innovation. You won’t get a playbook—you’ll help write it.

The anchor salary for this role is $140,000 plus equity and benefits, but your total compensation will be determined based on your unique experience and qualifications. Our goal is to ensure a competitive and equitable offer that motivates and excites you.

Key Responsibilities

Executive Leverage and Thought Partnership:

• Serve as right-hand, "truth-teller", and trusted advisor to the CEO.
• Plan and optimize the CEO’s calendar, prioritizing high-value activities and streamlining scheduling, travel, and logistics.
• Maximize CEO impact in high-stakes internal and external meetings by:
• • Preparing pre-briefs, defining objectives, and aligning stakeholders (BEFORE meetings)
  • Capturing notes, key decisions, and next actions (DURING meetings)
  • Synthesizing insights, driving follow-ups, and ensuring completion of outstanding items (AFTER meetings)
• Identify and execute initiatives that drive operational leverage across the organization.
• Oversee CEO-mandated, complex, critical, or longer-ranging special projects and cross-functional initiatives without a clear owner.
• Serve as an integrator and embedded partner across the business, breaking down silos and enabling cross-functional alignment or stepping in to fill temporary ownership gaps.

Leadership Communications and Materials:

• Create high-quality, audience-tailored materials (decks, memos, one-pagers) for quarterly board meetings, investor updates, customer engagements, and ad hoc strategic projects.
• Translate complex data, insights, and/or ideas into clear, high-impact messaging, ensuring alignment across and/or within leadership, employees, and external stakeholders.
• Drive effective decisions by preparing concise written briefs with context, options, and trade-offs, raising the bar on strong process, analytical rigor, and first-principles thinking and helping executives cut through noise to ask the right questions.
• Coach leadership team and management to effectively communicate business priorities, strategy, risks, and key decisions and trade-offs.
• Anticipate leadership communications needs, proactively identifying opportunities to ensure strategic alignment and strengthen leadership messaging to the broader organization.

Strategic Planning and Execution:

• Lead annual strategic and quarterly operational planning processes, including headcount planning, budgeting, sales forecasting, after-action reviews, and OKR planning.
• Ensure company priorities are clearly defined, with owners, timelines, and measurable outcomes.
• Drive execution across teams, ensuring cross-functional alignment and removing obstacles that slow down progress.
• Measure success and company performance through OKRs, KPIs, reporting, etc., surfacing key insights to keep leadership focused on what drives business impact.
• Lead planning and execution for external engagements like AI Executive Salons, the annual Confidential Computing Summit, or partner events, managing logistics, speaker coordination, and post-event impact tracking.
• Identify critical bottlenecks in the business that require unblocking and proactively troubleshoot, strategize, and implement solutions with key business stakeholders through end-to-end project management.

Operational Excellence:

• Lead the company’s operating cadence (“rhythm of business”), including leadership meetings, company all-hands, and board rhythms.
• Run leadership and cross-functional meetings with clear agendas, documented takeaways, methodical action tracking, and effective follow-through.
• Own and facilitate quarterly and annual planning, including OKRs and performance tracking.
• Build and refine operational processes that accelerate cross-functional execution.

Office and Team Support:

• Champion company-wide cultural initiatives aligned with OPAQUE’s core values.
• Plan and execute team offsites/onsites and social team-building events such as happy hours, dinners, and lunches.
• Foster company-wide alignment through internal communications and transparency initiatives.

Key Skills

• Strategic foresight: Translates long-term vision into actionable plans, anticipates future needs by thinking five steps ahead, and mitigates challenges before they occur with creative and practical solutions
• Systems thinking: Ability to understand and navigate the interconnectedness of various parts of the business, including recognizing patterns, identifying dependencies, and strategically analyzing how decisions and actions impact the larger organizational system
• Analytical prowess: Synthesizes information quickly; presents clear data-driven recommendations backed by quantitative and/or qualitative insights with risks and tradeoffs
• Execution bias: Acts with an innate sense of urgency to drive efficiency, streamline processes, and implement best practices in high-growth, fast-paced environments
• Complex program delivery: Leads multiple cross-functional initiatives simultaneously, meets tight deadlines, and ensures timely execution of strategic priorities
• Communications mastery: Writes/edits/storytells to confidently deliver compelling, persuasive narratives that can be tailored for a variety of audiences with a strong appreciation for detail and clarity
• Autonomy: Makes independent decisions while exercising strong judgment in a variety of situations, including taking ownership of challenges and acting with minimal direction
• Business Agility: Navigates ambiguity with poise and creativity and remains unflustered by numerous and competing numerous priorities, tasks and deadlines

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s / Master’s degree or equivalent experience in a related field (likely pre- or post-MBA, but not required)
• 2-7 years of experience in Chief of Staff, Strategy, BizOps, or similar roles (ideally in high-growth tech companies)
• Ability to work in the Pacific timezone (while we are globally distributed, our leadership team sits on the west coast)
• Willingness to travel periodically for events or in-person engagements
• Hungry for executive exposure, career acceleration, and company building