Chief Operating Officer

Talent Runway is a boutique talent partner that supports founders, startups, and scaling teams with tailored recruitment solutions.
The Role: You will be the founder's peer and operating partner. Today almost everything routes through our founder. Your job is to change that by building the systems, structure and management layer that let the company scale past him.
You'll own the areas he doesn't: operations, systems, people, org design, finance and legal. You'll manage people directly and still do hands-on work where that's the fastest way through. We have a young, talented team and very little operational infrastructure. You'll build it.
About the startup:
The startup is a high-volume UGC agency and short-form content infrastructure company. They build and run organic content engines for some of the fastest-growing consumer and tech brands. They also operate fleets of real TikTok and Instagram accounts, available as a self-serve product and through their own MCP server.
What you'll own:
Business operations end to end
Org design and line management across a team of ~15, scaling to 20+
SOPs that get used, then automations, so capacity is never the constraint
Finance, legal and hiring infrastructure
Priorities and the company's operating rhythm
Getting the founder out of operations so he can focus on product
Requirements
Track record
You've taken a company from zero to one, end to end, as a founder or founding-team operator
You've scaled a team through the hard stages, from 5 to 10 to 50, and know what breaks at each one
You've managed a team of 30+ across functions, directly and through managers
You've worked across more than one business model
Org and people
You design orgs: reporting lines, roles, when to hire, who to hire, when to split a team
You're a great line manager. People get better working for you, and you move fast when someone isn't working out
You build managers, not just teams. You can make a first-time manager effective
You hire well and set the hiring bar for the whole company
Systems and execution
You write SOPs that get used, then get them automated
You implement. What you design gets adopted, not left in a doc
Strong bias to action. You'd rather ship and fix than wait for certainty
You do both the thinking and the execution. You set the plan and do the work in it yourself
Judgment
You know when to build a system, when to delegate and when to do it yourself
Ruthless prioritization. You find the few things that matter and ignore the rest
You make good calls with incomplete information and stay calm when things break
You own outcomes. When something goes wrong, it's yours to fix
You've owned finance, legal and admin at an early-stage company
You take in complexity and surface what matters to the right people
How you work
Very high standards and a high-octane pace
A real 995+ operator. This is your natural rhythm
Radically transparent. You invite oversight and skip-levels
AI-native. You use tools and automation by default
Genuine interest in marketing, growth and short-form distribution
What's in it for you:
Competitive compensation
Equity package
The chance to build something from scratch
Work in a fast-paced, fast-growing industry

Work arrangement
No