About the role

This role exists to make a leadership team function as a team. ContactVerse is building out a CXO layer across two countries, and the risk at this stage is six people reporting separately to a CEO who then holds all the connective tissue himself. You would hold the operating cadence, chase the work that belongs to nobody, and make sure decisions taken in a room actually land. It is not a deputy role and it carries no line authority. Its power is entirely in follow-through. The role reports to both founders: to the CEO for the operating cadence of the leadership team, and to the COO as his executive support.

What you will do

• Own the operating cadence. What gets reviewed, how often, by whom, and what reaches the CEO in what form.
• Run the leadership meeting. Agenda, pre-reads, decisions recorded, actions owned and chased.
• Own cross-functional work with no natural home. The things that fall between two leaders and quietly never happen.
• Prepare board and investor material. With finance, and to a standard that does not need rewriting the night before.
• Track the company's commitments. To customers, partners and each other, and surface the ones that are slipping.
• Carry decisions out of the room. Communicate what was decided, to whom it applies, and by when.
• Prepare the CEO for what is coming. The conversation he has not yet had, the decision he is about to be asked for.
• Run specific projects directly. Where something matters and nobody else has capacity.
• Protect the CEO's time. Which mostly means deciding what does not need him.

Your first year

First 90 days. The operating cadence defined: what gets reviewed, how often, and what the CEO sees.

By six months. Cross-functional work that belonged to nobody now owned and tracked.

By twelve months. A leadership team that operates as one rather than as separate reporting lines.

What you will bring

• Ten years or more, including a chief of staff, business operations or strategy role to a founder or CEO.
• Has run an operating cadence for a leadership team and made it stick.
• Writes exceptionally well, including board material.
• Comfortable influencing people more senior than you with no authority over them.
• Discreet, and trusted with things not yet public.
• Has chased senior people and kept the relationship.
• Strong commercial and financial literacy.
• Happy to do the unglamorous work that holds a company together.

Nice to have

• Experience in a company operating across two or more countries.
• Consulting or investment banking background followed by an operating role.
• Experience of a company through a funding round.
• Technology sector experience.
• Has set up a board reporting pack from scratch.

What you will work with

You will work across Microsoft 365, the company's action tracker and whatever cadence you choose to put in place. There is no established rhythm to inherit, which is the point.

What this role is not

Not a deputy CEO - you hold the cadence, not the authority. It is a dual role rather than a narrow one: the Office of the CEO cadence for the CEO, and direct executive support to the COO, including his calendar, inbox triage, briefing notes and travel. Both halves are the job, not one creeping into the other.

How we work

We are split between the UK and India, with most of the delivery organisation in India, four and a half hours ahead. Expect a working pattern with a genuine overlap into the late afternoon and early evening UK time. These hours are indicative and may change as the business changes. Everything is remote and nobody is in an office.

We are a small company and we write things down. Decisions are recorded, corrections are made to the source rather than to the output, and status is expected to be honest even when it is unwelcome.

Compensation and what we offer

• A long-term incentive, discussed at offer stage for senior appointments.
• Fully remote working, with company-provided equipment where the role requires it.
• A role with unusual scope for its level, because the organisation is being built rather than joined.
• Direct access to the founders. There are no layers between this role and the people making the decisions.

How we will assess you

We assess against three or four weighted signals agreed before we read a single CV, rather than against years of experience or a list of tools. Expect four stages:

• Introductory conversation with our People team. About 30 minutes, covering the role, your background and what you are looking for. This first conversation may be with an AI assistant; you will be told at the time and may ask to speak to a person instead.
• Conversation with the hiring manager. About 60 minutes, going deep on what you have done and how you think.
• A working session on a real ContactVerse problem. About 90 minutes. Not a whiteboard exercise and not a take-home test you do unpaid in your evenings.
• Final conversation with the founders. Covering fit, expectations and how we would work together.

We aim to complete the process within three weeks and to give you a decision, with reasons, within three working days of the final stage.

Equal opportunity

ContactVerse is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applications regardless of age, disability, gender identity or expression, marital or civil partnership status, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation. We select against the published signals for the role and nothing else. If you need an adjustment at any stage of the process, tell us and we will make it. It will not count against you.

Research consistently shows that some candidates apply only when they meet every criterion. If this role interests you and you meet most of what is listed, please apply.

How to apply

Write to career@contactverse.ai quoting reference POS-006, with your CV and a short note (a few paragraphs is plenty) on the part of this role you would most want to get your hands on, and why.