Chief of Staff, Operations

Job description

Chief of Staff, Operations

Brooklyn, NYC – Operations – 1 day ago – In office – Full-time

Company Mission

Photon gives patients ownership of prescriptions. We’re building the infrastructure that connects prescribing to fulfillment, giving patients a simpler way to understand their options and choose where and how to get their medications. Our vision is to make prescriptions more transparent, accessible, and consumer-driven.

Who We're Looking For

You can be thrown at almost anything and figure out how to make it work. One month that might mean rebuilding how the company hires and onboards people, the next it might be automating a reporting process no one’s had time to fix, the next it's diving into a data problem that’s been ignored. You don't need a fixed lane — you build one wherever the company needs it most right now.

You think in systems, not job descriptions. People process, internal tooling, budgeting, onboarding — to you these are all just systems that either work or don't, and you're the person who makes them work. You'd rather build a script, a workflow, or an AI-assisted tool than hire your way out of a manual process. You're allergic to busywork, especially your own — if something's repeatable, you make it repeatable by a system, not by you doing it again next month.

Your job is to spin the web: build the system, get it working cleanly, hand-off or automate it, then move to the next thread that needs attention. You're not looking to permanently own one function — you're looking to be the person who makes everything work, everywhere, and then moves on to what's next. That requires real resourcefulness: you don't wait to be told how, you figure it out.

You can hold a lot of context across the entire company in your head at once — priorities, people, half-finished projects, upcoming deadlines — without losing the thread or spiraling off chasing the wrong thing. You know the difference between "interesting" and "important right now," and you protect your attention accordingly.

Core Responsibilities

Act as a highly flexible execution partner to the COO — take on whatever the company's highest-priority gap is at any given moment, from strategic projects to hands-on process work

Own the systems behind how Photon finds, hires, onboards, and supports its people — treating this as an operations and tooling problem, not an HR administration one

Own the company's internal tool stack and AI-assisted workflows — deciding what tools exist, what gets automated, and what gets built, bought, or retired, across people processes and beyond

Build and improve operational systems across functions — get each one running cleanly and efficiently, then move on to the next area that needs it, rather than settling into permanent ownership of any one system

Hold context across the full company — priorities, projects in flight, and cross-team dependencies — so you can flag risks and connect dots before they become problems

Drive execution on the COO’s top initiatives, from strategic projects to closing operational gaps that don't have a natural owner

Required Qualifications

4-6+ years in a high-ownership, high-breadth operational role (chief of staff, business operations, startup operations generalist) with a track record of context-switching across genuinely different problem types

Demonstrated ability to build structure and process from ambiguity, across more than one functional area

Experience at an early-stage (Series A/B) startup, where process didn't exist yet and you had to build it

Real, hands-on tooling/automation fluency — comfortable using scripting, no-code, or AI-assisted platforms to eliminate manual work rather than absorb it

Strong written and verbal communication — comfortable synthesizing information for an executive audience

Proven follow-through and resourcefulness: things you own get finished, without needing a playbook handed to you

Excited to work in-office in Brooklyn

Preferred Qualifications

Experience building internal tools yourself — scripting, automation, or AI-assisted platforms

Background in healthcare or health-tech

Comfort with data — light analysis, spreadsheets, or dashboards to inform decisions

Why Join Us

Photon is reimagining how prescriptions move through the healthcare system—making it simpler, faster, and more transparent for patients, providers, and pharmacies alike. You'll:

Get the broadest possible view of how a Series A company scales — closer to the center of the business than almost any other role

Take on genuinely different problems month to month, with the latitude to define how and where you add the most value

Build the systems — including the AI-assisted ones — that let Photon feel as good to work at at 80 people as it does at 20

Join a team that gives a shit — about the work, about each other, and about doing things the right way

Our Values

Be a Pizza Rat – We're ambitious subway dwellers. It's our slice and we're not letting go.

Make Rice – We don't prepare fish until we've mastered rice. Quality is in the details.

Put it in Orbit – We know success happens well after lift-off. The rocket isn't our mission.

Seek Buried Treasure – We're digging in unexpected places. Our adventure has meaning.

Grow in Darkness – We're thriving amidst forest decay. Our day in the sun will come.

Pay Transparency

The estimated base salary for this role is $170,000 – $200,000 USD annually . Actual compensation will depend on skills, qualifications, and experience, and includes equity and benefits. At our stage, we place significant value on equity as part of total compensation.

Compensation

The base pay range for this role is $170,000 – $200,000 per year.

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Worksite address

new york, NY, 10261, US

Who can apply

Review the original listing for work authorization, qualifications and employer requirements.