Description
AI-Powered Enterprise SaaS Company | Series B
About our Client Company
They are a fast-growing AI-powered enterprise platform that has raised $45M in Series B funding and is scaling rapidly from $15M to $100M+ ARR. With 120 employees and 200+ enterprise customers, they are at an inflection point where operational excellence will define their next chapter.
They are scaling their operations, go-to-market, and customer success functions to meet explosive demand while maintaining unit economics and culture.
They need a battle-tested operator who can bring discipline, process, and scalability to their rapid growth while understanding how AI fundamentally changes how they build, sell, and support their product.
The Opportunity
As our client's first Chief Operating Officer, you will be the executive responsible for translating their technical innovation into operational excellence. You'll build the infrastructure, processes, and teams that enable them to scale from $15M to $100M ARR over the next 24-36 months while improving their unit economics and maintaining their culture.
This role reports directly to the CEO and sits on the executive leadership team alongside the CTO, CFO (to be hired), and Head of Product.
What makes this role unique: You're not just optimizing existing operations you're building the operational playbook for an AI-first company where traditional SaaS metrics and workflows need to be reimagined for AI-powered products.
What You'll Own
Go-to-Market Operations & Revenue Excellence
- Scale their sales organization from 15 to 50+ account executives while improving sales efficiency and reducing CAC
- Build and lead their Revenue Operations function (currently non-existent) to drive predictable, repeatable revenue growth
- Redesign their sales process to reflect how AI products are bought (different POC process, different buyer personas, different implementation timelines than traditional SaaS)
- Partner with Head of Sales to improve sales cycle from 6 months to 3 months while maintaining deal quality
- Own pricing and packaging strategy as they evolve from seat-based to consumption-based and AI-usage models
Customer Success & Product Operations at Scale
- Transform our customer success function from reactive support to proactive value delivery
- Build our implementation and onboarding infrastructure to support 100+ new enterprise customers per year
- Create feedback loops between Customer Success and Product teams to ensure AI model improvements are driven by real customer outcomes
- Design and implement AI product operations—how they monitor model performance, manage compute costs, and measure AI-driven customer value
- Establish the operational metrics that matter for AI products: model accuracy in production, time-to-value, AI-driven efficiency gains, etc.
Operational Infrastructure & Efficiency
- Build the finance operations foundation in partnership with the incoming CFO
- Implement financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting processes that didn't exist pre-Series B
- Design organizational structure and hiring roadmap for scaling to 300+ employees over the next 24 months
AI-Driven Operational Transformation
- Lead the integration of AI into internal operations—using AI to improve sales forecasting, customer health scoring, support ticket resolution, and resource allocation
- Partner with CTO to assess AI vs. human trade-offs: where should we automate with AI, and where do humans create more value?
- Build approach to responsible AI operations ensuring AI models are performing fairly, transparently, and in alignment with customer expectations
- Educate board and investors on how AI fundamentally changes operational metrics and unit economics
Leadership & Culture
- Build and lead a world-class operations team across RevOps, Customer Success, Business Operations, and People Operations
- Preserve high-performance, mission-driven culture as they scale from 120 to 300+ employees
- Partner with Head of People to design approach to talent, including how to compete for top operations talent in a hot market
- Serve as the "systems thinker" on the executive team—the person who connects dots across functions and spots operational bottlenecks before they become crises
Who You Are
Required Experience & Background
Operational Leadership in High-Growth Tech
- 12+ years of progressive operations experience, with at least 5+ years in senior operations leadership (VP Operations, COO, or equivalent)
- Proven track record scaling a B2B SaaS or enterprise software company from $10M-$15M to $75M-$100M+ ARR
- Experience building revenue operations, sales operations, or customer success operations functions
- Direct experience managing through hyper-growth while improving unit economics
AI Fluency (Not Deep Technical Expertise)
- You don't need to be a machine learning engineer, but you must understand AI business models, AI product economics, and how AI changes traditional SaaS metrics
- Experience with AI-powered products or platforms (either building, selling, or operating them)
- Comfortable discussing AI infrastructure costs, model performance in production, and AI-driven customer value
- Ability to educate board members and investors on how AI changes operational metrics and expectations
Stage-Appropriate Operator
- You've lived through the Series B/C stage before-you know what "good enough for now" looks like vs. "built to scale to $100M+"
- Comfort with ambiguity and building processes where none exist, but also knowing when to implement more structured systems
- Experience balancing "move fast" startup culture with "operational rigor" needed for enterprise sales
- Track record of scaling teams (ideally from 50-100 to 200-300 employees)
Metrics-Driven & Financial Acumen
- Ability to build financial models and translate operational improvements into financial outcomes
- Experience working closely with CFOs and finance teams
- Comfort presenting to boards and investors with data-driven narratives
Personal Attributes & Leadership Style
The "Translator" Between Technical and Commercial
- You can sit in product/engineering discussions and understand the technical implications, then translate those into go-to-market and customer success strategies
- Able to bridge the gap between technical founders and commercial teams
- Natural curiosity about how things work, but focused on practical application vs. theoretical perfection
Builder Who Scales
- You're energized by building functions from scratch, but you also know when to bring in specialists and delegate
- Track record of hiring, developing, and retaining top operational talent
- Willing to "do the work" early (building spreadsheets, running analyses) before you have a full team
Systems Thinker with Bias for Action
- High emotional intelligence-able to influence without authority, build consensus, and navigate startup politics
- Resilient and adaptable-comfortable with the chaos and rapid change of fast-growth startups
- Direct and transparent communicator who gives and receives feedback well
- This isn't a "optimize a well-oiled machine" role-you're building the machine
- Direct line of sight between your decisions and company outcomes
- Opportunity to build and mentor the next generation of operational leaders
- Your operational playbook will become the standard for how AI companies scale