Chief Operating Officer

Job description

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER OVERVIEW Physical Superintelligence is an exceptionally well-funded seed-stage startup with roots at Google, Meta, DeepMind, NVIDIA, Citadel, Harvard, MIT, Johns Hopkins, the Perimeter Institute, and the Institute for Advanced Study building AI systems to discover new physics at scale. We are seeking a Chief Operating Officer to serve as a strategic partner to the CEO, to build the operating backbone of the company, and to run PSI itself as a tightly integrated, agent-augmented organization. Our mission is to discover and commercialize transformative physics breakthroughs at scale with artificial superintelligence, safely, verifiably, and for broad public benefit. The last century's golden age of physics gave us transistors, lasers, and nuclear energy. We believe artificial superintelligence will unlock the next one. We're creating the infrastructure to industrialize scientific discovery and usher in this new era. ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES Operations is the enabling layer that runs underneath the company, and you own it. You sit on a lean executive team and are expected to think and act at the level of the company, not only your function. The role concentrates on four core areas. Scale the team. Own hiring operations and help PSI scale headcount 2-3x as it grows toward Series A. Own performance management. Bring order to rapid growth without slowing it. Own the quality and efficiency of company processes. In coordination with the relevant executives and managers, own the systems the company runs on, including project management, internal and external communication, KPI tracking, legal and compliance, finance, and HR. Set the operating cadence: own the planning, reporting, and decision rhythm, and run the operating reviews. Take the things that fall between functions and own them. Build the systems where they do not yet exist, and integrate heterogeneous tools into coherent workflows. Run operations AI-first. This is non-negotiable: you are, or are willing to become, completely AI-native, fluent across the current frontier models and the best existing agent and automation tooling, and you keep pace as they change. Instrument the company end to end and deploy agentic workflows across every operating function so that output per person scales faster than headcount. PSI builds AI systems and should be run as one internally; the goal is to make it the most aggressively agent-augmented organization in its category. Scale commercial operations. Partner with GTM leadership to define and scale the operational and staffing requirements for our commercial function. As we transition from research-heavy to commercial engagement, you will bridge the gap between technical output and revenue generation, building the processes and hiring the operational talent necessary to ensure our delivery and support systems scale effectively in lockstep with revenue growth. Across these areas you also act as a thought partner and force multiplier for the CEO, pressure-testing priorities and providing the decision support a founder needs to run a company moving this fast, freeing the CEO to focus on strategy, fundraising, and external relationships. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR Agentic, hands-on. You are ready to build, orchestrate, and operate multi-agent workflows. You are familiar with current agent frameworks and you think in terms of what to automate and how to compose agents into reliable workflows. An instinct to instrument. You are obsessed with data analytics. You are comfortable in SQL, BI tooling, and data modeling, and you can stand up the operational analytics layer yourself before there is a team to delegate to. You treat metrics and feedback loops as how an organization should be run, and you can point to an org you have run this way. A builder of internal systems. You have owned a company's knowledge base, internal tooling, and workflow integration, and you think about the organization as a control system. You are fluent in modern project management systems like Linear and can build workflows that optimize team velocity and transparency. A proven operator. Eight or more years in operating leadership at a venture-backed company that scaled through the stage we are entering now. You have built people, compliance, and operating functions, not only inherited mature ones. Executive range. You can operate as a peer to the CEO and the rest of the executive team and be trusted with the highest-stakes decisions. You have been a genuine strategic partner to a founder or CEO before. Credible in a regulated, deep tech context. You can hold a conversation with sophisticated infrastructure customers and a technical team. You do not need to be a physicist or write code yourself. Bias to ship. Demonstrated ability to operate without bureaucracy in fast-moving environments. You ship; you do not stall. NICE TO HAVE Experience operating within regulated industries and familiarity with export control compliance and sensitive technology research and development. Experience scaling internal operations, tooling, or platform at a fast-growing deep tech or AI company. A background that blends operating leadership with hands-on technical or data work, rather than a pure people-and-process profile. HOW WE WORK We are engineering-led. Engineers own problems end to end, from spec to ship to on-call. We write contracts before logic, test against real systems instead of mocks, and favor simple designs that ship over clever ones that do not. Our development process is AI-native, and we expect the operating side of the company to run on the same principles. LOCATION AND COMPENSATION This role is based in Boston and is on-site at our Cambridge hub. We offer competitive compensation including salary, benefits, and meaningful early-stage equity. We evaluate operating judgment, what you have built, and the leverage you create. Because of our export control obligations, some responsibilities may carry restrictions tied to citizenship or immigration status, which we will discuss transparently during the process. We are an equal opportunity employer and value diverse perspectives in building platforms for AI-driven discovery.