Chief of Staff

OUR MISSION: At Sunrise Robotics, we are dedicated to augmenting humanity through intelligent robotics. Our mission is to elevate the world of manufacturing by introducing intelligent, flexible robots that enhance human capabilities and existing machinery, ushering in the next era of production at higher quality, with less waste, and lower cost. OUR VISION: We see a future where every element of manufacturing, from design to assembly, is optimised with intelligent automation. Our vision is to integrate flexible robotic solutions, based on generic hardware and advanced software/AI capabilities, into manufacturing, particularly in small and medium-sized enterprises, to make automation economically viable and accessible, for all sizes of manufacturers. We are not just building robots; we are creating the strategically crucial components for autonomous, intelligent agents of the future. The role: We are hiring a Chief of Staff to the CEO. You are the CEO's closest execution partner. You sit in the rooms the CEO sits in, and represent him in the ones he cannot be in. You make sure the company executes fast on the decisions made in those rooms, by driving the most important cross-team projects yourself. The mandate has four parts. Run the operating cadence the leadership team works inside. Own the company's commitments and see them through to done. Make the CEO's decisions and priorities legible to everyone they affect. Protect the CEO's time for the work only the CEO can do. This is a senior individual role with no direct reports. Your authority comes from the mandate, agreed in writing with the CEO, and from being right. You are not a gatekeeper. We are outcome-driven, direct, high trust and high autonomy. There is very little hand-holding. We enjoy working with people who bring a healthy degree of intensity and drive. What this role is not: Not an executive assistant. Not a COO. Not a strategy seat where you write decks about work other people do. What you will do: Run the operating cadenceOwn the quarterly planning cycle, company goals and the weekly leadership meeting: agenda, a dashboard of under 15 metrics, decisions written down, commitments tracked to done. Every red metric gets a root cause and an owner within the week. Drive cross-functional executionWhen a decision needs three teams and has no single owner, you are the direct responsible individual until it lands. You hold owners to their dates, unblock, and elevate early. Most of these run in weeks, not quarters. Make decisions travelEvery leadership decision gets written down and reaches the people it affects within a day. You draft the all-hands deck, decision memos and internal communication in the CEO's voice. The CEO edits; you draft. You hold the bar in the rooms the CEO is not in. When quality or pace drops, you name it that day. Build and manage the operating systemMorning briefs, commitments tracking, meeting-to-action pipelines, and the reporting the CEO takes to the board. Build the foundation and systems, so the company gets more legible with less manual work. You do this yourself, not through a vendor. Make the company legibleDecisions, processes and playbooks written once, findable by everyone, and used as the standard. Take special projects, up to a day a weekYou pick them up with CEO-level urgency and hand them back completed, or with an owner and a clear path to done. Who you are: You bring energyHigh intensity, high pace, and you are impatient when good decisions sit. You set the tempo in a room without raising your voice. People move faster because you are there. You have operated inside a fast-changing, venture-backed companyTypically four to eight years in. You have lived through at least one moment where the plan changed under you and you kept the team executing. Titles vary: chief of staff, business operations, founder's associate, program or product lead, consultant who went operating, ex-founder. We care about the work, not the title. You build systems, not just tasksSomewhere, a team runs on a cadence or a tool you set up, and it kept working after you left the room. You think in systemsYou see how a change in hiring shows up in deploy capacity three months later. You spot the second-order effect before it hits. You run complex projects across stakeholdersSeveral teams, outside parties, a hard deadline, no formal authority. You have done that and landed it. You are technically fluentStrong technical fluency is required. You are equally at home in a spreadsheet and a database. You pull your own numbers, build your own model, and follow an engineering discussion closely enough to ask the question that matters. You are AI-nativeYou have built agents or automations that run without you: a pipeline, a briefing, a tracker. You can show us. Daily use of a chatbot is not enough. You write and visualize information clearlyShort, clear, and in someone else's voice when needed. A one-page memo from you ends a debate. You turn data into the chart that makes the decision obvious. You chase without being annoyingFollowing up daily is the job. People end up grateful you did. You hold confidencesYou will know about sensitive information before almost anyone. That access is a duty, not a way to be liked. You push backYou get to the real intent behind a vague request and say when we are wrong. You argue from facts. You are curious about the actual workYou want to know what a deploy engineer does in a customer's facility at 6am, and you go and find out. Bonus points: You have shipped something with Claude Code, Codex or similar, and can talk about what broke. You have worked in hardware, robotics or manufacturing, where part of the team works next to the machines. Location: Remote within Europe. For the first six months you spend up to half your time in Ljubljana, next to the CEO. After that, remote with regular travel to Ljubljana. Why Sunrise? Work directly with the CEO, founders and leadership at an early stage, in a role that touches every decision the company makes. We care about talent density, speed of execution and long-term technology leverage. Get things done, and you shape your own trajectory. #J-18808-Ljbffr