Founding Business Operations
About the role
About Phonic
Phonic is an audio research lab focused on powering the most realistic, human-like voice AI conversations. We’ve rethought the entire stack in pursuit of this goal, from models to product, to create voice agents that feel like they truly understand you, respond emotionally, and perform agentic tasks with frontier intelligence.
Our customers build voice-native AI products in industries like customer support, healthcare, logistics, and recruiting. We’ve grown ~20x since the start of this year, and we’ve raised over $30M from tier-1 VCs, including First Round Capital, Lux Capital, and Felicis.
About the Team
Phonic has an extremely talent-dense and close-knit team of top-tier AI researchers, international olympiad medalists, and former founders. We work with high trust and keep raising the bar on how we deliver world-class research and product experiences. Everyone takes ownership of what they do and isn’t afraid to dive headfirst into new problems. We’re fully in person in our SF office.
About the Role
As a founding member of our business operations team, you’ll work directly with our founders on whatever matters most that week. That might mean getting a customer’s voice agent live, building a dashboard that tracks how every account is doing, testing a new go-to-market idea, or helping close a key hire.
You won’t write production code, but you’ll be technical enough to get hands-on and quick to figure out the rest with AI tools. You’ll be just as comfortable testing a voice agent as you are talking pricing with a customer.
A jack-of-all-trades will thrive here. Maybe you want to start a company one day, or maybe you just get excited by a new problem every week. Either way, you’ll see how every part of a leading frontier AI company works, up close. Over time, you’ll likely find the part of the business you enjoy most and go deeper there; we’ll figure out what that is together.
What You’ll Do
Here’s where we expect you to start. The role is built to be flexible, so expect it to evolve with the needs of the business and your own interests.
Get customers live
Work with prospects to scope pilots, shape pricing, and move deals from kickoff to close
Keep each implementation on track, pulling in our engineers when needed, and QA customers’ agents until they beat the alternatives
Keep customers healthy and growing
Track every live account’s usage, call quality, risks, and next steps, and step in where customers need a hand
Own follow-ups and escalations, and turn what you hear into product feedback for engineering and research
Grow the business
Develop and test go-to-market strategies, from outbound to marketing, to reach teams building voice agents
Build the dashboards and reporting the team
runs on
Take on projects nobody owns yet, across finance, legal, ops, and hiring
What You’ll Bring
1–5 years at a high-growth startup or in strategy and operations, consulting, banking, or VC
A strong academic record from a top university
High velocity and high ownership: you thrive in early-stage environments where the playbook is still being written
Extreme organization: you run many threads at once, follow up without being asked, and close every loop
Clear, concise writing and the presence to lead calls with developers and business leaders alike
We’d also love to hear from engineers, product managers, and solutions engineers who want to work more directly with customers.
Nice to Have
A technical degree (CS, engineering, math, or similar)
Founder or early-employee experience
A track record of starting things on your own, like a side project, small business, or community
Familiarity with real-time streaming, telephony, or conversational AI platforms
Experience running growth, go-to-market, or pricing experiments
Benefits
💸 Top-tier compensation: in order to get the best talent, we provide salary and equity that recognize your skillset
🥗 Meals: free breakfast, lunch, and dinner provided in the office
🩺 Healthcare: Comprehensive health, dental, and vision
🤝 We have regular off-sites and team celebrations