Business Operations Partner Assistant to COO

Business Operations Partner / Assistant to COO (Finance, Supply Chain, Procurement, People Ops, Ops) Health, Food & Technology Company --- **Location:** Remote (7am-7pm PST, Mon-Sat availability required) **Type:** Full-time, Independent Contractor **Reports to:** COO (Co-Founder) **Schedule:** Full-time (avg 65 hrs/week). 7am-7pm PST overlap required. --- ## The Company We are a vertically integrated health and food technology company that designs, produces, and ships precision nutrition meals nationwide. We operate at the intersection of three industries: food manufacturing, health outcomes, and direct-to-consumer technology. We own the entire value chain. Our culinary team develops every recipe in-house. Our production kitchen manufactures thousands of meals per week to exact macronutrient specifications. Our proprietary technology platform manages menu engineering, nutritional modeling, subscription logistics, and customer health data. Our cold chain operation ships fresh meals to all 50 states in reusable glass packaging. Every meal is chef-crafted, never uses gluten, dairy, refined sugar, or canola oil, and is designed to deliver measurable health outcomes: better energy, improved body composition, optimized biomarkers. We are building toward a future where food is personalized to individual biology, not generic dietary guidelines. The business is bootstrapped, profitable, and growing. Eight figures in annual revenue. No board to report to. The company has been operating for over a decade, scaling methodically without sacrificing product quality or financial discipline. Our customers are high-performing professionals, families, and people managing metabolic health goals (including GLP-1 patients) who pay a premium because they have experienced the difference between real food and everything else on the market. We are not a meal kit. We are not a frozen food brand. We are a health performance company that happens to deliver its product in glass jars. --- ## The Role This is not a traditional assistant role. You will operate at two altitudes: strategic coordination across the COO's full portfolio and hands-on execution of critical projects. The COO owns every function outside of tech and marketing: operations, supply chain, culinary, finance, fulfillment, HR, customer experience, product design, packaging, and vendor management across a vertically integrated food production and nationwide logistics operation. Your job is to multiply his capacity. You will coordinate projects across functions, chase down blockers, build financial models and dashboards, manage recruiting pipelines, run people ops processes, and ensure nothing falls through the cracks. This is an ownership role. You drive projects to completion, build systems that scale, and hold people accountable without drama. **Your mission:** Within 90 days, eliminate the COO's administrative burden so he can focus on strategy, product, and growth. You will own people ops, project tracking, financial analysis, recruiting coordination, and vendor follow-ups end to end. --- ## What You Own **Financial Operations and Analysis (25%)** - Own and maintain weekly KPIs: revenue, refunds, engagement rates, LTV by cohort, program-level profitability. - Track contribution margin by product line. Flag margin shifts before they become problems. - Run the weekly pricing review (after initial shadowing period). Hold the team accountable to margin targets. - Review the general ledger monthly, flag anomalies, and prepare P&L summaries with recommendations. - Build financial models to support decisions on new products, pricing, hiring, and vendor negotiations. **People Operations and HR (20%)** - Manage payroll processing (Gusto): approve hours, process bi-weekly payroll, handle off-cycle runs. - Own onboarding and offboarding: system access, accounts, equipment, documentation. - Google Workspace administration: account audits, license management, access control. - Manage daily updates and deliverable tracking for 5-8 active contractors across multiple functions. - Coordinate recruiting pipelines for all open roles: candidate screening, interview scheduling, recruiter management, job postings. **Project Management and Execution (25%)** - Build and maintain a centralized project tracking system across all active initiatives. - Surface blockers within 24 hours. Provide weekly status reports with clear owners and deadlines. - Coordinate vendor negotiations, contract tracking, and supplier performance documentation. - Manage procurement follow-ups, delivery schedules, and quality issue escalation. - Support new product launches with project timelines, manufacturer coordination, and packaging specs. **Operational Coordination and Admin (20%)** - Triage the COO's email and Slack. Flag urgent items, handle routine coordination independently. - Prepare meeting briefs: who, context, decisions needed. Convert meetings into action items within 24 hours. - Manage the COO's calendar across time zones (team spans US, Philippines, India, Eastern Europe). - Draft and send team communications, vendor notifications, and policy updates on behalf of the COO. **Systems Building (10%)** - Document processes to make them repeatable. Build dashboards for operational visibility. - Create automated reminders and tracking systems (Make, Zapier, N8N) where they save real time. - Translate strategic vision into executable project plans with timelines and milestones. --- ## What Success Looks Like at 90 Days - Tasks and projects have clear owners and deadlines. Nothing falls through the cracks. - The COO spends 50%+ of the week on strategy and product instead of admin. - All open roles have active pipelines with weekly progress updates. - People ops runs without COO involvement: payroll, onboarding, contractor tracking, system admin. - Weekly KPI dashboards are updated by you, with exceptions flagged before the COO asks. - Vendor coordination is proactively managed with clear status updates. --- ## The Attributes That Define Success Here This role will be career-defining for the right person. You will work directly with a top-tier executive whose background spans managing 400 traders on Wall Street and building one of the most respected fine dining operations in the country. He built this company from zero to 8 figures without a dollar of outside capital. The standard is high. The pace is fast. The learning curve is steep. And the upside for someone who can keep up is enormous. These are the attributes that separate someone who thrives in this role from someone who drowns in it: **Ownership Mentality** You cannot wait to be told what to do. You see a problem, you diagnose it, you fix it or bring a recommendation. You do not forward messages between teams without synthesizing or deciding. You look at a situation and say "here is what I think we should do" before anyone asks. **Financial Fluency** Not "I can make a spreadsheet." You look at a P&L and see what is wrong. You understand why a 2-point margin drop matters, how food cost and labor interact, what contribution margin by product line tells you about the health of a business. You think in unit economics, not just track numbers. **Written Communication That Sounds Like a Human** 60%+ of this role is written. Slack messages, vendor emails, team announcements, meeting summaries, candidate outreach. If your writing is stiff, vague, or reads like corporate boilerplate, you will slow the COO down instead of multiplying him. Your writing needs to be clear, direct, and get to the point. **Relentless Follow-Through** The single biggest failure mode in any fast-moving operation is things sitting unnoticed. Questionnaires go overdue. Vendors do not respond. Contractors miss deadlines. You have a system for tracking every open item and you do not let anything age without action. You are the person who closes loops, not the person who opens them. **Judgment Under Ambiguity** You will not always get perfect instructions. Half the time the direction will be "figure it out," and that is meant literally. You ask the right clarifying questions, fill in the gaps with first-principles thinking, and move. Paralysis in the face of incomplete information is disqualifying. **Emotional Steadiness** The team spans multiple cultures and time zones. Vendor relationships require firmness without burning bridges. You hold people accountable without creating drama, absorb pressure without crumbling, and have hard conversations with directness and without emotional charge. You understand the difference between urgency and anxiety. **Speed With Precision** Not rushing. Speed with precision. When the COO says "I need this by end of day," you deliver by end of day. When a vendor issue surfaces at 8am, you are already pulling context and drafting a response by 8:30. The pace of this business does not tolerate people who need three days to produce a first draft of anything. **AI-Native Thinking** The COO uses AI as an extension of his brain every single day. You need to operate the same way. Research, drafting, analysis, modeling. Not as a novelty, but as a daily multiplier. If you are not already using AI tools to 3x your output, you are already behind. **Discretion** You will see everything: compensation data, termination decisions, vendor disputes, financial performance, strategic plans, team issues. You handle sensitive information without leaking, gossiping, or using it inappropriately. Access to everything is a responsibility, not leverage. **Hunger** This is the one you cannot train. The right person sees this role as the opportunity it is: direct access to how an 8-figure bootstrapped company actually runs at the executive level, exposure to every function, a clear path to VP Ops or GM. You are not looking for a comfortable remote job. You are looking for the hardest thing you can find because you know that is where the growth is. --- ## Who You Are **Experience** - 5+ years in operations, chief of staff, strategic finance, management consulting, or similar. - Managed complex projects with 10+ stakeholders across functions. - Built financial models and used them to drive business decisions. - Experience with HR/people ops: payroll processing, onboarding/offboarding, contractor management. - Bonus: food, CPG, manufacturing, DTC, or operations-heavy businesses. **Financially Literate** - Read and interpret P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow statements. - Understand unit economics, contribution margin, LTV/CAC. - Advanced Excel/Google Sheets: pivot tables, VLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH, financial formulas. **Ruthlessly Organized** - Juggle 15 concurrent projects without dropping details. - Build systems, not one-off solutions. Document as you go. - Bias to action after first-principles thinking. **Clear Communicator** - Write clearly and concisely. 60% of this role is written communication. - Know when to escalate vs. solve independently. - Comfortable communicating across cultures and time zones. **Accountable Without Drama** - Follow up persistently but respectfully. Have direct conversations about missed deadlines. - Zero tolerance for excuses. Focus on solving problems, not assigning blame. **AI-Native** - Daily use of Claude, ChatGPT, or similar AI tools to multiply your output. - Build simple automations where they save real time. - Understand AI limitations and when human judgment is required. **Available During US Hours** - 7am-7pm PST availability is required (meetings, coordination, urgent issues, real-time collaboration). - Expect 65 hours per week on average. This is a high-output role supporting a COO who works at that pace. --- ## What You Get - Direct exposure to executive operations: P&L management, pricing strategy, hiring, vendor negotiations, supply chain, and financial planning at a profitable 8-figure company. - Real ownership: your work directly impacts profitability, team effectiveness, and company growth. - Rapid skill development across financial operations, project management, recruiting, vendor management, and people ops. - Clear path to growth: excel here and position yourself for Controller, GM, Head of Operations, or VP Ops as the company scales toward $50M+ revenue. --- ## How to Apply Your application must include all three items below. Incomplete applications are automatically rejected. 1. Resume focused on operations, finance, people ops, and project management experience. 2. Short cover letter (max 1 page) answering these three questions: - Why does this specific role excite you? - Describe a time you built a system or process that measurably improved operational efficiency. - How do you prioritize when 10 high-priority projects all need attention today? 3. Work sample (choose one): - A financial model you built in Excel/Google Sheets (anonymize company data). - A project tracker or dashboard you created and maintained. - A one-page analysis where you identified a problem, analyzed data, and made a recommendation. --- ## Interview Process - Round 1 (30 min): Prioritization approach, sample P&L analysis, operational problem-solving. - Round 2 (60 min): Case study on a real operational challenge at the company. - Round 3: Meet team members, references, offer. **Note on AI-generated applications:** We will know. If your cover letter or work sample reads like it was generated by ChatGPT with no real specifics, it is an automatic rejection. We use AI heavily and expect you to as well, but your application should demonstrate your thinking, your experience, and your judgment. Use AI as a tool, not a ghostwriter. --- ## Contractor Terms - Independent contractor. You are responsible for your own taxes, benefits, and local compliance. - Payment: invoice by the last day of each month, paid by the 10th of the following month. - While you are an independent contractor, we expect this role to be your primary professional commitment. Outside work that prevents you from meeting core availability (7am-7pm PST) or materially interferes with your ability to deliver this scope is not acceptable.