Chief Operating Officer
Hybrid (San Francisco Bay Area)$70k - $150kFull-timePosted 1mo ago
About the role
Chief Operating Officer for Buoyant Aero, a hardware/operations company building autonomous airships for advertising, media, and dual-use applications. Lead the scaling of the operating machine across deployment operations, manufacturing and supply chain, logistics, people operations, financial planning, and supporting systems.
Responsibilities
- Scale the operating model to support many simultaneous nationwide deployments; document and systematize processes; establish ownership, rhythms, KPIs, planning, and accountability.
- Deployment & field operations: scalable model for launching and supporting new markets; optimize deployment planning, staffing, logistics, equipment movement, customer coordination, and operational readiness; enable parallel customer operations; drive reliability, utilization, cost efficiency, and continuous improvement; maintain separation between business requirements and flight-safety authority.
- Manufacturing, supply chain & logistics: scalable supply and production system for growing fleet; improve sourcing, supplier management, inventory planning, production scheduling, logistics; reduce lead times and supply risk; consider onshoring/dual-sourcing; improve flow between manufacturing locations and operating markets; move toward repeatable fleet manufacturing.
- People & Organization: build and manage a high-performing organization; develop managers and scalable structure; establish clear responsibilities and performance standards; create recruiting processes for rapid growth without lowering standards; decisive personnel decisions; foster accountability.
- Financial & Business Operations: budget ownership, forecasts, resource planning, and financial accountability; visibility into operating costs, deployment economics, manufacturing costs, staffing, and cash needs; translate strategy into operating plans and budgets; build decision-making systems for intelligent allocation of people and capital.
- Founder & Leadership Partnership: collaborate with founders to create structure without bureaucracy; turn ambitious ideas into executable plans; manage priorities and capacity; provide clarity amid rapid changes; hold leaders accountable; balance speed with discipline.
Qualifications
- Significant senior operating leadership experience.
- Experience scaling a physical-world business from a small number of operations into a larger operating system.
- Experience managing complex, distributed operations.
- Experience with hardware, manufacturing, logistics, field operations, or other physical-mre movement of assets.
- Strong supply-chain and operational-optimization experience.
- Experience building and managing growing teams; recruiting quickly; addressing underperformance with decisive personnel decisions.
- Strong financial and analytical instincts; ability to switch between strategic planning and hands-on problem solving.
- High personal organization and exceptional follow-through; ability to operate in an ambiguous, rapidly changing startup environment.
Skills
Required:Senior operating leadershipScaling physical-world operationsSupply chain managementTeam building & recruitmentFinancial planning & analysisProblem solving in ambiguity
Benefits
- Competitive executive salary plus meaningful equity, commensurate with experience.
Last updated Sep 2, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
About Buoyant Aero
Bringing back blimps
Buoyant Aero builds zero-emissions autonomous drone blimps to break free from existing advertising paradigms and reach new audiences in new places. Whether it’s on the beach, outside the convention center, or through the window of your target executive’s office, Buoyant’s blimps amplify your message to create measurable brand benefits.
roboticsdronesadvertising
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