Founding Operations Lead

About the role

We’re looking for a Founding Operations Lead to build the connective tissue between our families, our product, and how Elayne operates.

At our stage, some of the most important things Elayne will eventually do in software still happen because a smart person figures them out manually. A family hits an edge case, an institution gives us a different answer than expected, a court rejects a filing. The process that worked ten times breaks on the eleventh.

Your job is to be close enough to the work to see those problems firsthand, rigorous enough to understand the pattern underneath them, and product-minded enough to help turn what we learn into systems that work for thousands of families.

You’ll move constantly between doing the work, designing the process, and helping build the product that makes the work disappear.

You’ll work directly with the CEO and across product and engineering. There is no established playbook to inherit. A large part of your job is creating it.

What you’ll own

• The hardest operational problems: take ambiguous real-world issues from first signal to resolution, then turn what you learned into a better system
• The manual-to-software loop: do new workflows by hand, identify what repeats, turn it into a durable process, then work with product and engineering to automate it
• The operating system: build the SOPs, decision trees, escalation paths, quality standards, metrics, and internal tools that let Elayne handle more estates without simply adding more people
• The voice of operational reality: make sure what families, attorneys, courts, and financial institutions are encountering makes its way into product decisions
• The gaps between functions: own important problems that don’t fit neatly into one function and drive them across the finish line

Here’s what that can look like. A family thought they had found everything their dad left behind, but couldn’t be sure. We followed the trail manually, contacted institutions, pulled records, and eventually found over $100k in a forgotten retirement account. Then we mapped how we found it and turned that process into a system that has since surfaced millions of dollars families didn’t know were there.

That loop is the job. Solve the problem once because a family needs you to. Build the system so the next thousand don’t.

Who we’re looking for

• You’ve built from zero to one. You’ve worked at an early-stage company where important things were undefined, personally owned messy problems, and created structure instead of waiting for it
• You’re an unusually strong operator. You can take a messy problem with incomplete or conflicting information, figure out what is actually happening, and drive it to resolution
• You think in systems. When something happens repeatedly, your instinct is to find the pattern, define the decision points, measure it, and make the process better
• You’re product-minded without needing to be the product manager. You can translate operational reality into clear requirements, distinguish what should stay human from what software should absorb, and work exceptionally well with product and engineering
• You have judgment and warmth. You can earn trust from someone dealing with grief, money, family dynamics, or bureaucracy without losing clarity, boundaries, or speed
• No work is beneath you. You’re as comfortable calling an institution, investigating a strange edge case, or fixing a broken workflow as you are designing the system that eventually replaces that work

We care more about the shape of your experience than the exact title. You might come from early-stage operations, product operations, fintech, healthcare, insurance, legaltech, trust and safety, or have been a founder yourself. What matters is that you’ve personally turned messy real-world work into systems that scale.

How we work

We’re small, fast, and close to the people using what we build. The distance between discovering a problem and changing the product is intentionally short.

Everyone here owns outcomes, not tickets. We communicate directly, move quickly, and care deeply about impact and getting the details right.

Location & compensation

NoMad, NYC office

$140,000 to $180,000 + meaningful equity

Medical, dental, and vision insurance + 401(k)

Equal opportunity

Elayne is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants based on ability, experience, and potential, and do not discriminate on the basis of any protected characteristic under applicable federal, state, or local laws.

Interview Process

• Intro conversation: get to know each other, the role, and what we're building
• Take-home exercise: a short, realistic project reflecting the actual work, done on your own time
• Office session: walk us through your work, dig into a live problem together, and meet the team
• Offer: we check references, then move fast