Operations Lead

Job description

## About Arbor Neuroscience (formerly Forest Neurotech) Arbor is a nonprofit research organization working on one of the hardest open problems in clinical neuroscience: how to change brain circuits by design. Millions of people with depression, chronic pain, and other brain disorders have no treatment that works. Modulating activity in the brain circuits underlying their symptoms – with electrical stimulation, focused ultrasound, or magnetic stimulation – can work spectacularly well. But it doesn't work reliably, and we can't predict who it will help. That's what Arbor aims to fix. The starting point is a new class of experiment: intervene, measure how the circuit responds, track the symptom, and repeat in the same individual over months. We’re building the necessary experimental platform. It currently includes the Forest 1 ultrasound system, which works like a wearable functional MRI, but with higher resolution. The system images activity across large brain volumes, including deep brain structures, and will soon stimulate as well. We are also adding electrode-based interfaces in animal studies. From these data, we'll build models to make neuromodulation predictable. Arbor is a Focused Research Organization within the Convergent Research family, and the new name for Forest Neurotech. We're a mission-focused nonprofit, doing multidisciplinary translational work that doesn't fit in a lab or on a company roadmap. We have the funding to run the first phase, and we're a small team – the people we hire now will shape what Arbor becomes. ### The Role This is the person who makes the organization run, and takes on the problems that don't yet have an owner. You'd work directly with the CEO. Part of the job is the operational backbone: interfacing with Convergent Research on HR, contracts, and vendors, some administrative work, and building the systems a growing research organization needs. And it also includes the work that has no obvious owner yet. You might spend a week figuring out whether a new clinical site is worth pursuing, and what it would take. You might sit in on a scientific strategy session and leave with a piece of it. You might build the case for a funding proposal, work out how we should think about IP for a nonprofit that expects to spin things out, or go find out what it would actually cost to run studies abroad. At this size, the interesting problems are abundant, and the people who can tackle them are in short supply – if you can take one on, it's likely yours. **In your first six months**, you'd take over the operational interface with Convergent. You'd help close candidates for several of our open searches. You’d help us build out our spaces in the Bay Area and Seattle. You'd get board and funder reporting onto a regular cadence. You'd help define and establish our partner agreements with hardware collaborators, clinical sites, and universities. And you'd have found at least one problem we didn't know we had and fixed it. ### What You’ll Do - Interface with Convergent Research on finance, HR, contract, and vendor relations - Run recruiting, including some sourcing, owning scheduling and candidate experience, and onboarding - Own the operational side of our partnerships with hardware and research collaborators, alongside the scientific leads - Help prepare board materials, funder reports, and proposal packages, and keep the commitments in them tracked - Set up internal systems, processes, and documentation that streamline our work - Take on open-ended problems: evaluate an opportunity, research a question, unblock a project, and come back with a recommendation - Help build Arbor’s culture ### Who We’re Looking For Two backgrounds could work. *An experienced operator.* You've run operations or business functions at a startup, research institute, or lab. You've built these systems before and do it better and faster each time. *A strong generalist.* You've spent a few years at a startup, a research group, investment firm, or in a policy, program or consulting role. You’ve been the person who does the thing that nobody else could or thought to figure out. You haven't run an organization before, but you want to. Either way, we're looking for: - Evidence you've built something operational where nothing existed, and made it work - The judgment to know which problems need a system and which just need someone to handle them - Strong writing ability - Enough technical curiosity and knowledge to follow a scientific or engineering conversation and know what matters - Directness without friction – you say what you think, ask when you don't know, and aren't looking to compete with your colleagues You don't need a neuroscience background. You do need to want one.