Chief of Staff Business Operations

Crux AI • Full-time • Palo Alto, CA, US • 1d ago

Built to set the gold standard for integrated AI infrastructure

Crux AI is a newly formed, U.S.-based integrated AI infrastructure company created to remove the physical and operational constraints on consequential AI ambitions. Crux brings together power, high-density data centers, TPU silicon, networking, orchestration software, and ongoing operations as one integrated system.

Crux is being capitalized to plan every layer together, develop each one to demanding standards, and operate the whole system with efficiency and reliability. That gives hyperscalers, frontier AI labs, sovereign customers, enterprises, and AI-native companies greater freedom to pursue the AI they are here to create.

What You'll Do

You will build and run the operating system of the company as Crux scales from a founding team to 300+ people, and you serve as the executive team’s leverage across special projects.

On the business operations side, you will design the company’s operating cadence — planning cycle, OKRs, and business reviews and reporting — and run cross-functional program management for the Stage 1 build, surfacing dependencies and risks.

You own the health of the organization against its targets: consolidating OKRs across the company, cascading company-level objectives down to teams and individuals. You define what Crux’s corporate systems and vendor ecosystem need to do — collecting requirements cross-functionally, standing up outsourced functions where speed demands it, and working with Business Systems on the build, adoption, and scaling of internal AI-native systems as the company grows and migrates off third-party vendors.

You own Crux’s geographic strategy: where the next gigawatts should go, weighing power availability and price, interconnection, tax, customer proximity, and sovereign demand over a multi-year horizon, as the input the capacity plan and site pipeline build against.

In This Role, You Will

Prepare and follow through on the business priorities, executive, board, and investor materials, and the Google and Blackstone relationship agendas. You will take on the unowned problems that appear in a company being built from scratch. You are building for the end state: the operating model has to be designed for the company Crux will be at scale — institutional quality without bureaucracy, AI-enabled tooling and automation. You’ll partner with every function and with the executive team in this role.

SIGNALS OF SUCCESS

After 60 Days In This Role

You will have stood up the operating cadence — weekly, monthly, and quarterly meeting and reporting rhythm with owners, inputs, and decision rights defined — and an AI-powered workstream tracker that gives the executive team a single view of priorities, decisions, and owners
You will have delivered a company-wide OKR framework for Stage 1, aligned with the executive team, and established reporting to run it
You will have mapped Crux’s corporate systems and vendor ecosystem — what is outsourced, what is internal, what is missing — and deliver prioritized requirements and a migration roadmap to internal AI-native systems, in partnership with Business Systems

After 6 Months

You will have run the Stage 1 cross-functional program — milestones, dependencies, and risks across the organization — with issues surfaced before they become slips
You will have company-level OKRs cascaded to every team and individual, harmonized across functions, with an AI-enabled tracking cadence that shows the executive team where the organization is on and off track against Stage 1 targets
You will have tightened Crux’s core business processes — planning, approvals, reporting, procurement of corporate services — to institutional quality so the company can scale without bureaucracy
You own the production of company-wide board reporting, with metrics that reconcile to Finance and the capacity plan of record
Completed a first-cut geographic strategy: a ranked view of target markets for Stage 2 capacity with the criteria and data behind it
Demonstrated an AI-forward and automated approach to this role — you have built, in a hands-on way, AI-enabled tools for business reviews, OKR reporting, program tracking, and executive materials that the organization uses every day

After 1 Year

You will have started the migration from outsourced vendors to AI-native solutions for the functions Crux chose to bring in-house — requirements defined by you, built and scaled with Business Systems — and manage the remaining vendor relationships for specialized functions that stay outsourced
Prepare quarterly business reviews and investor presentations, with G&A efficiency reporting that shows the operating model scaling ahead of headcount
Operate and iterate the OKR system at scale across 300+ people, with organizational health against targets visible at every level
Have the geographic strategy adopted as an input to the capacity plan of record and the site pipeline, with a forward view of how power markets and customer demand shift the ranking
Have the company-wide operating model, reporting, and controls institutionalized for operating at scale, and be positioned to build and lead the business operations function as Crux scales

Experiences

EXPERIENCES, ATTRIBUTES AND MINDSET THAT INDICATE A GOOD MATCH

8–10+ years across strategy consulting, private equity, business operations, or chief of staff roles, including direct responsibility for designing and running an operating cadence, planning process, or corporate systems build at a fast-growing company
Led cross-functional programs with physical or infrastructure components — data centers, hardware, energy, or telecom — and produced executive-, board-, and investor-level materials that leadership made decisions on

Attributes

You are outcome driven and hands on. This is a builder’s seat, not a supervisory one — you build your own tools, use AI and automation as a default in everyday work, and you’d rather build a system that answers the question continuously than assemble the deck every month
You are a force multiplier, not a gatekeeper. You make the people around you faster and better informed, and you earn trust across functions by being useful to them

Mindset

You have a high tolerance for ambiguity. You absorb ambiguity and navigate complexity rather than passing it along
You have low ego and high standards. You are as comfortable owning a strategy as running a tracker, and you hold both to the same bar

Nice To Have (preferred, Not Required)

Experience with data center or power market analysis — site selection, interconnection, or energy procurement
Experience in a company that scaled rapidly under private equity or strategic sponsorship
Background at a top-tier strategy consulting firm, private equity, or investment banking followed by an operating role

Salary Range Information

The annual salary range for this position has been estimated based on market data and other factors. However, a salary higher or lower than this range may be appropriate for a candidate whose qualifications differ meaningfully from those listed in the job description.

About Crux