Chief of Staff

Chief of Staff

Our mission at Wafer is to maximize intelligence per watt by using AI to optimize AI infrastructure, achieving orders of magnitude better energy and cost efficiency per token.

We believe cheap intelligence is the most essential piece of technology for a future of abundance. We care about building a future where intelligence is "too cheap to meter."

Wafer commercializes these efforts by serving optimized LLMs as an inference cloud.

We're looking for a Chief of Staff to be the right-hand operator to our CEO, doing whatever is most important for the company. You'd manage everything from company strategy to financial modeling to legal correspondence to recruiting engineers. You'll work with us every day to make sure the company is moving as fast as we can toward a very important goal.

The role is intentionally very broad. As helpful context, we've included specific examples of the projects that matter most right now so you have clarity on what you could be doing on day 1.

About the role

Recruiting is the first major priority. We recently raised a large financing round, we're six people today, and we plan to double headcount as quickly as possible. You'll help us find and recruit exceptional engineers while building only the lightweight systems we need to move quickly.

Beyond recruiting, you'll work directly with the CEO on the company's most important problems across strategy, operations, financing, legal, and whatever else is holding us back. This is not a coordinator role. Often, you'll get a messy set of notes or an unclear problem and be expected to figure out what matters, find a path through it, and close the loop.

Some of the early work will be operational or administrative. As you build context and judgment, the scope will become increasingly strategic. We care more about how quickly you learn and how much ownership you take than whether you've already done every part of the job.

This role is five days a week in person at our San Francisco office.

What you will do

• Help recruit the next members of the team, especially engineers. This includes shaping roles, sourcing candidates, running a fast and thoughtful process, and helping us close the people we want.

• Take on hard, unfamiliar, and poorly defined problems. Turn incomplete context into a plan, find the right people and information, and drive the work to completion.

• Notice what is slowing the company down and fix it. Build lightweight processes when they help us move faster, then improve or remove them as the company changes.

• Build and maintain financial models, support financing work, and help prepare materials and analysis for investors.

• Handle important operational details, including legal correspondence, contracts, vendors.

• Absorb technical input from engineers and explain the same issue clearly to investors, customers, candidates, or other people who need a different level of context.

• Represent the CEO in internal and external conversations, and make sure important commitments do not get dropped.

Who you are

• You seek out hard, unfamiliar problems and have concrete examples of finding a path through them.

• You are relentlessly detail-oriented. You notice missing pieces, follow through, and close loops without being asked twice.

• You are scrappy and practical. You build the minimum process needed to accelerate the team instead of creating process for its own sake.

• You have enough technical fluency to work closely with engineers on AI, ML systems, and infrastructure, then translate what you learn for other audiences.

• You learn unusually quickly. You may not have done every part of this job before, but you can build the context and judgment to take on more over time.

• You communicate clearly and concisely, understand your audience, and can represent Wafer well to candidates, customers, and investors.

• You have strong judgment, are discreet with sensitive information, and have low ego about what kind of work needs to get done.

• You have experience moving quickly in an early-stage or zero-to-one environment where priorities change as the company learns.

Benefits

Competitive salary and generous equity

Team members receive a competitive salary along with an extremely generous equity grant in the company.

Visa sponsorship

We sponsor visas and work permits.

Medical, dental, and vision

We offer competitive medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees and dependents and cover 100% of premiums.

Time off

We offer unlimited paid time off.

Parental leave

We offer biological, adoptive, and foster parents paid time off to spend quality time with family.

Daily lunch and dinner

We cover lunch and dinner daily for all employees.

Housing

If you live <= 0.5M miles from the office (walking distance), we provide a $1k/month stipend for rent.

Transportation

We pay all Ubers//etc. from and to the office.

We cover lunch daily for employees.

Equal opportunity

Wafer is committed to maintaining a workplace free from discrimination and harassment.

We make employment decisions based on business needs, job requirements, and individual qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion, belief, national origin, social or ethnic origin, age, physical, mental, or sensory disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, civil union or domestic partnership status, past or present military service, HIV status, family medical history or genetic information, family or parental status including pregnancy, or any other status protected by law.

We welcome the opportunity to consider qualified applicants with prior arrest or conviction records. Our commitment to diversity includes hiring talented individuals regardless of their criminal history, in accordance with local, state, and federal laws, including San Francisco's Fair Chance Ordinance and California's ban-the-box laws.