Head of Strategic Operations, reporting directly to the CEO
Join Chipiron to work directly with the CEO on the company’s hardest problems. Take unusual ownership, learn at extreme speed, and grow toward running major parts of the company.
Head of Strategic Operations, reporting directly to the CEO
General Management Track
Paris | Full-time | Exceptional ownership
Chipiron is building a radically new generation of MRI systems.
We are taking one of the most complex medical technologies in existence and trying to make it radically simpler, cheaper and more accessible.
This is not a normal job.
We are looking for an exceptional operator to work directly with the CEO and progressively take ownership of running the company.
Not as an assistant or coordinator, but as someone who can eventually operate the company without the founder being involved in every decision.
The role
For the first months, you will work extremely closely with the CEO across virtually every important topic at Chipiron:
company strategy
R&D execution
clinical development
regulatory strategy
recruiting
organizational design
partnerships
fundraising
board preparation
finance
operations
difficult people problems
whatever becomes the most important problem that week
You will have access to information very few people in the company have.
You will be given responsibility unusually quickly.
And the expectations will be unusually high.
The objective is simple:
Learn how the company works, become capable of making excellent decisions independently, and progressively take over its day-to-day leadership.
What this is not
This is not a traditional right arm role where you prepare slides, organize meetings and track action items for executives.
You will do some of those things when necessary.
But your real job is to make the company move faster.
When something important is broken, you own the problem.
When nobody clearly owns something, you own it until someone does.
When a decision needs to be made, you obtain the information necessary to make it.
When execution drifts, you intervene.
You are expected to develop opinions, defend them and change them when the evidence changes.
You are explicitly expected to disagree with the CEO when you believe he is wrong.
What success looks like
Within the first three months, you progressively take ownership of:
the company's operating cadence
cross-functional execution
management follow-up
critical company priorities
major internal problem solving
selected hiring processes
preparation and execution of strategic decisions
Over time, the scope can expand toward a General Manager or COO, depending entirely on performance.
There is no fixed ceiling on the role.
Who we are looking for
Your background matters much less than your trajectory.
You may come from entrepreneurship, engineering, consulting, investing, operations, science or something completely different.
What matters is that you are exceptionally good.
You probably recognize yourself in several of these statements:
You learn fast
You have extreme agency
You are unusually resourceful
You hate letting problems sit unresolved
You naturally take ownership beyond your formal responsibilities
You are comfortable making decisions with incomplete information
You can move between technical, financial and organizational problems rapidly
You have extremely high standards
You can absorb a large amount of work without becoming disorganized
You communicate directly
You are intellectually independent
You care more about learning and impact than hierarchy
You want responsibility faster than most organizations are willing to give it to you
At some point, you could imagine running a company yourself
We are not specifically looking for someone who has already done this job. We are looking for someone who can become extraordinary at it.
The environment
Chipiron is a deep-tech startup. That means reality frequently refuses to cooperate with the plan.
Experiments fail, timelines move, technical problems interact with organizational problems.
Important decisions sometimes have to be made before all the information is available.
You need to enjoy this.
The pace is high, the standards are high, feedback is direct and responsibility comes early.
If you need a highly structured environment, narrowly defined responsibilities or constant validation, this will probably be a terrible job for you.
If you want to compress several years of operating experience into a much shorter period, it may be an extraordinary one.
What you get
You will work directly with the CEO on the most important decisions in the company.
You will see how a heavily funded deep-tech company is built from the inside.
You will interact with world-class scientists, engineers, physicians, investors and industrial partners.
You will receive dramatically more responsibility than your title or years of experience would normally justify.
You will be judged on your ability to create outcomes, not on tenure.
And if you prove that you can run the company, we will give you the opportunity to do so.
One important warning
Do not apply because you want to be close to the CEO. Apply because you want to become capable of doing his job. That distinction matters enormously.