Haystack
← Back to Jobs
Full time
Other
SN

Founder's Associate

SnapmagicSan Francisco Office🇺🇸United StatesPosted Oct 1, 2026

Why This Role Stands Out

This Founder's Associate role offers unparalleled exposure to all facets of a rapidly growing, category-defining tech company, providing a unique opportunity to learn and contribute directly alongside the CEO. You'll thrive here if you are a proactive builder eager to develop diverse skills across finance, operations, and strategy in a dynamic, hybrid environment. Embark on a fast-paced journey to shape the future of electronics design and gain invaluable experience building a world-class organization.

Quick Overview

Seniority
Leader
Employment type
Full Time
Work mode
Hybrid
Location
San Francisco Office, United States
Posted
11 hours ago
CRMHelmPayroll

Job Description

SnapMagic is building the digital growth engine for the global electronics industry.

More than 2 million engineers use SnapMagic every year to discover electronic components and design products faster. Behind the scenes, we're building the operating system for electronics design: one of the world's largest electronics component databases, a platform the industry already trusts, and a new generation of AI tools (like our new AI assisted design) that take engineers from idea to working hardware faster than ever before.

With strong revenue growth, proven product-market fit, and backing from leading Silicon Valley investors (YC, Bow Capital), we're scaling fast and building the team to take us there. The next chapter of how the world's hardware gets designed is being written now, and we want you in the room for it.

The Opportunity

We're hiring a Founder's Associate: a seat right next to the CEO of a category-defining company, built for the future founder who wants to learn what it takes to build something big by doing it now.

You'll work alongside the CEO to divide and conquer a wide range of work that touches every part of the business: finance, recruiting, tooling and special projects, and everything in between. Wherever something is slow, manual, or broken, you'll find and fix it, building the automations, workflows, and AI-powered tools that make the whole team faster.

This is a builder's role, not a coordinator role, and it's one of the fastest ways to learn how a cutting-edge startup really works. Some days you'll be wiring up an automation between our CRM and Slack. Other days you'll be untangling a vendor issue, getting a support queue under control, or turning a messy manual process into something that runs itself. You'll be exposed to every part of the business, solving high-impact problems across the entire company, and absorbing everything it takes to build one, all while making a real mark from day one. The common thread: things get done, and the company gets more capable because you were here.

What You'll Do

This role is fluid by design, and it flexes with what the company needs most. You'll own work like this:

  • Leverage Creation & AI Automation: Find the repetitive, manual, and slow parts of how we work, then build the automations, agents, and internal tools that eliminate them. Use AI to multiply the output of the CEO, the leadership team, and the company.

  • CEO Execution Support: Take recurring and one-off tasks off the CEO's plate, from research and follow-ups to logistics and vendor coordination. Keep things moving so the CEO's time goes to the highest-leverage work.

  • Finance operations: Run the monthly finance cycle: send customer invoices, run aging reports every two weeks, answer billing questions, run payroll, and close out expense receipts each month. Review spend and cut what we don't need.

  • Business and technical ops: Own the operational backbone: tooling and systems administration, contracts and e-signature, process documentation, data hygiene and cross-team workflows. Make sure commitments and SLAs are met, and follow up when they aren't.

  • Special Projects: Pick up cross-functional work that doesn't have an owner yet. Scope it, ship a first version, and hand it off once it's running.

This is a hands-on role. You'll do the work yourself, build the systems that scale it, and then hand off what should be owned by someone else.

What you'll learn and where this leads

This is a front-row seat to building a cutting-edge startup, with a path to grow as fast as you can prove yourself.

  • See every part of the business. Finance, hiring, customers, support, sales and product operations: you'll touch them all, and learn how each one really works.

  • Learn from the CEO up close. You'll see how decisions get made, how priorities get set and what it takes to lead a company, because you'll be working through it side by side.

  • Build with AI at the frontier. You'll use the newest AI tools and agents to solve real problems, and build skills that will matter in any company you ever run or join.

  • Make a mark. The systems you build and the problems you solve will have an impact across the entire company, and you'll see it within weeks, not years.

  • Grow into a bigger role. The ideal path leads to Business Operations Manager, then Chief of Staff, and eventually Head of Operations.

If you want to absorb as much as possible, make a real impact while you learn, and understand what it takes to be a founder, this is the role.

What we're looking for

  • A STEM degree and 1–3 years in operations, business operations, automation, solutions engineering or a similar hands-on role, ideally at an early-stage startup

  • Experience building automations, workflows or AI-enabled processes that measurably saved time or improved output

  • Technical fluency: comfortable with no-code and low-code automation tools, and with working alongside LLMs and AI agents

  • An exceptionally high bar for excellence: you hold yourself to higher standards than anyone else would, with extreme attention to detail and quality

  • A bias toward action: you'd rather ship a first version than write a plan about it

  • Fluency and speed with Google Docs, Slides and Sheets

  • Strong strategic judgment: even early in your career, you think about problems in a sound, strategic way and make good calls on priorities and trade-offs without needing to be taught, plus discretion with sensitive information

  • Clear written and verbal communication, and the ability to work with people at every level of the company

  • Comfort with ambiguity and solving problems independently

  • Hungry, humble and hardworking: ambitious about growing quickly, and happy to do whatever it takes to get the job done

This is a hybrid position that requires in-person work 3 days a week in our San Francisco office.

You might be a good fit if you

  • Look at a repetitive process and immediately think about how to automate it

  • Enjoy building as much as operating

  • Are curious about what it takes to start and run a company

  • Are happy doing the unglamorous work and doing it well

  • Have high standards for your own work and sound strategic instincts, and know when to ask, when to decide, and when to just do it yourself

  • Earn trust through follow-through

  • Thrive in small, high-accountability teams

Perks and benefits

At SnapMagic, we believe in fostering an environment where your career thrives and your well-being is prioritized. Join us and enjoy the following perks and benefits:

  • A role at the helm of growth, with vast opportunities for impact and innovation

  • Competitive compensation packages

  • Comprehensive Medical, Dental and Vision coverage + dependent coverage

  • 401k plan

  • Innovative work environment. We value innovation and encourage creative thinking