Chief of Staff

Chief of Staff to the CEO

AI agents are beginning to act on behalf of companies and users — making purchases, spinning up compute, triggering workflows, and interacting with third-party systems. But today's financial infrastructure was built for humans, not autonomous systems. Companies and developers need a way to give agents controlled access, meter actions, monetize usage, and transact across rails, without rebuilding payments, risk, and compliance internally.

Sapiom builds the financial payments infrastructure for the machine economy - autonomous spend rails that enable AI agents to transact with real-world services safely, processing every dollar spent, every policy decision navigated, and every risk signal generated.

We have assembled a world-class team with deep payments and infrastructure DNA to build the operating system for machines. Backed by a $15.75M investment from Accel, Menlo, and Anthropic, we are moving with relentless focus to deploy the economic substrate for autonomous agents.

The CEO architects the product and vision; you architect the operational backbone that lets the company scale. You'll embed deeply in the day-to-day mechanics of the business, translating founder intent into execution, tracking progress relentlessly, and removing bottlenecks before they slow the team down.

You'll debate strategy with the CEO and drive operational execution, with the judgment and trust to speak on their behalf in high-stakes situations, internally and externally. You'll move fluidly across the business — from structuring commercial partnerships and supporting GTM motion, to driving discussion with partner CTOs and representing the product confidently with developers. You treat legal, finance, and people ops with the same rigor as a production system, build processes that are audit-ready by default, and reach for automating outcomes. You build teams people insist on joining and hand them off once they are up and running.

Responsibilities

• Serve as an extension of the CEO — translating strategy into clear, trackable initiatives, driving cross-functional alignment across Engineering, Product, and GTM, and ensuring key priorities move forward with speed and accountability.
• Architect and systematize the company's operating functions — finance, legal, compliance, hiring, and ops — building systems designed for hyper-growth that are audit-ready by default.
• Support the commercial engine by structuring Design Partner relationships, defining ICPs, managing GTM cadences, and translating customer discovery into product direction and positioning.
• Own the capital and narrative layer — synthesizing market signals into a coherent story, preparing board and investor materials, and orchestrating fundraising processes end-to-end.
• Build and lead early-stage teams across new functions, acting as interim manager until a world-class domain owner is recruited and the function is handed off.

Requirements

• 10+ years in a high-execution role — Engineering, Technical Program Management, Product, or Strategy — with a proven track record driving complex, cross-functional initiatives from idea to completion
• Strong technical fluency: able to engage credibly with engineers and partner CTOs, represent the product externally, and identify technical growth opportunities
• Demonstrated experience building or scaling business operations (finance, legal, compliance, hiring) in a high-growth startup environment
• Track record supporting or leading fundraising end-to-end — data rooms, decks, investor narratives, and diligence management
• Experience structuring commercial partnerships: LOIs, ICPs, success criteria, and translating customer discovery into product direction
• Comfort pressure-testing executive thinking in high-stakes settings — surfaces blind spots and challenges assumptions constructively
• Proven ability to design recruiting engines and hiring bars that raise team quality; willing to act as interim leader for new functions
• Hands-on with automation tooling and AI agents — default instinct is to eliminate operational drag through systems, not headcount
• Builder's mentality: designs for 100x scale from day one