VP Operations / Head of Operations / Chief Operations Officer / Co-Founder

Location: Berkeley, California

Company: Confidential climate robotics / infrastructure technology company

About the Company

Our client is building intelligent robotic systems for large-scale climate resilience and infrastructure protection. Their technology enables physical transformation of land and coastal environments, supporting flood defense, wetland restoration, disaster recovery, critical infrastructure protection, and future habitat creation.

Backed by leading climate technology and frontier technology investors, the company is tackling one of the hardest categories in technology: building sophisticated robotic systems that operate in the real world, while also selling into complex, high-stakes markets across infrastructure, government, climate resilience, and defense-adjacent customers.

This is a company for people who want to build something physical, mission-critical, and civilization-scale.

The Role

The company is hiring a VP Operations to build and lead the operating system that allows the business to scale from breakthrough technology into repeatable deployment, delivery, and commercial execution.

This is a senior, company-building role for someone who can operate across strategy, operations, deployment, customer delivery, partnerships, and internal execution. The right person will be equally comfortable turning ambiguity into structure, working with technical teams on hard physical systems, and helping the company sell and deliver something that is both hard to build and hard to sell.

You will work closely with the founders and leadership team to translate ambitious commercial and technical goals into operational reality.

Key Responsibilities

Own and scale core business operations across deployment, customer delivery, internal processes, and strategic initiatives.
Build the operational infrastructure required to take complex robotic systems from prototype or early deployment into repeatable field execution.
Partner with engineering, product, hardware, field operations, and commercial teams to ensure the company can reliably deliver in real-world environments.
Drive strategic planning, company priorities, operating cadence, metrics, and cross-functional execution.
Support the commercialization of a technically complex product sold into challenging markets such as infrastructure, climate resilience, government, utilities, disaster recovery, construction, or defense-adjacent sectors.
Create scalable systems for project delivery, customer onboarding, field execution, procurement, vendor management, and operational risk management.
Lead high-priority strategic initiatives on behalf of the CEO/founders, especially where technical complexity and commercial ambiguity overlap.
Help build the playbook for selling, deploying, and supporting a category-defining physical technology.
Recruit, manage, and develop a high-performing operations team as the company scales.
Act as a senior problem-solver across the business, bringing structure, urgency, and judgment to complex operational challenges.

Ideal Background

Experience in a senior operations, strategy & operations, business operations, deployment, general management, or chief-of-staff-style role at a high-growth technology company.
Background in deeptech, robotics, hardware, climate technology, infrastructure technology, industrial automation, construction technology, aerospace, defense technology, energy, or another complex physical-world technology environment is strongly preferred.
Experience operating in a Series B or similarly high-growth scaling environment is highly relevant.
Strong ability to work with technical teams building complex systems, even if not personally an engineer.
Track record of helping scale a business where both the product and the go-to-market motion are difficult, ambiguous, or non-standard.
Experience selling, deploying, or operationalizing products for enterprise, government, infrastructure, industrial, or other complex customers is a strong plus.
Commercially sharp, operationally rigorous, and comfortable operating close to the founders.
Able to move between high-level strategy and hands-on execution without ego.

Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate may currently be a VP Operations, Head of Operations, Head of Strategy & Operations, Director of Operations, Business Operations leader, Chief of Staff to a technical CEO, GM, or deployment/business operations leader at a deeptech or high-growth Series B company.

They will likely have spent time in an environment where the company was building something technically difficult, selling into complex customer segments, and creating operational playbooks from scratch.

The JAM l People in Robotics

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