Chief of Staff

About Sapiom

Sapiom is building payment infrastructure for AI agents. We enable agents to make purchases for people, manage payments between businesses, and buy the compute, inference, and APIs they need to operate. As agents become part of everyday life, we're building toward the experiences people will use to trust them with their money: one place to set what agents can do, see what they did, and stay in control across every agent they use.

Through one integration, Sapiom connects agents to funding sources and payment methods. Our intent verification checks that each transaction matches what the person or business authorized. Spending controls define where and how much agents can spend, with a record of every transaction and its outcome. We're building toward a world where people and businesses can delegate payments to agents with confidence.

We're a small team in San Francisco with deep experience in payments and infrastructure. Our founder was Director of Engineering in Payments at Shopify for five years. We've raised $50 million in our first 12 months from Accel, Dragonfly, Coinbase Ventures, Okta Ventures, Menlo Ventures and Anthropic.

About the role

The rails for agentic payments are being decided right now, in conversations between card networks, commerce platforms, infrastructure providers and the builders using them. As Sapiom grows, the opportunities competing for our CEO's attention are multiplying, from partner calls and conference invitations to fast-moving market shifts, and this role makes sure his time goes where it matters most.

You'll partner closely with our CEO, Ilan Zerbib, extending his reach across the market, customers, projects and events he can't run himself, working alongside our Head of Strategy & Operations, GTM, product and engineering. This is a high-autonomy role for someone with the judgment to act in his name, the technical fluency to hold their own with a partner's CTO, and the drive to close every loop.

What you will do

Own the execution behind the CEO's priorities: prepare him for every important conversation, follow through on what comes out of it, and run projects end to end when he needs them done, not just tracked. You'll also keep him and the rest of the company, ahead of the market, tracking what networks, platforms and competitors are doing in agentic payments and what it means for Sapiom.

You'll also shape where and how the CEO shows up in the market, from choosing the conferences and speaking slots worth his time to preparing the talks, roundtables and dinners he leads. The goal: the CEO spends his time only where his judgment is required, and nothing he starts gets dropped.

Responsibilities

• Prepare the CEO for high-stakes meetings, including partner, customer, industry, and investor conversations: research the people and the company, frame the decision and land a one-page brief before he walks in.

• Close the loop after every meeting: capture decisions and commitments, send follow-ups, assign owners across the team and track each one until it's done.

• Lead the special projects the CEO hands you end to end, from a market deep dive or an AI vendor cost review to a pilot launch, owning the plan, the cross-functional work and the outcome.

• Own the CEO's events calendar: research and prioritize conferences, podcasts and speaking slots, pitch organizers with our PR partners, and prepare the talks, roundtables and dinners he leads.

• Track the agentic payments market, from network and protocol announcements to competitor launches and partner moves, and distill it into briefs that reach the CEO and anyone at the company who needs them.

• Support the CEO's partner and customer pipeline: research new opportunities, document tradeoffs with the R&D team and keep each conversation moving, taking some end to end when volume calls for it.

• Build the AI agents and automations that make all of this scale, from meeting prep and note capture to follow-up tracking and research, so the work grows without adding headcount.

Requirements

• 7+ years in high-ownership roles such as chief of staff, business development, strategy, product or consulting, ideally at a fintech, payments or infrastructure startup. You've worked directly for a founder or CEO and represented them externally.

• Technical fluency: you understand APIs, payment flows (cards, issuing, ACH, stablecoins) and how AI agents work, well enough to brief a CEO and hold your own with a partner's CTO or head of product.

• Sound judgment and discretion: you know when to act in the CEO's name and when to escalate, treat confidential information carefully by default, and earn the trust of executives inside and outside the company.

• Exceptional writer and synthesizer: you turn an hour-long call or a stack of research into a one-page brief with a clear recommendation.

• AI-native: you use AI daily to research, draft and automate, have built your own agents or workflows, and understand how agents behave (and misbehave) in production.

• Relentless follow-through with low ego: you close loops without being asked, thrive in ambiguity and an intense in-person pace, and care about outcomes over credit.

• Nice to have: You've been chief of staff to a founder at a fintech, payments or infrastructure startup, run executive events and conference programs, or built a network in agentic commerce.

Logistics

• Location: San Francisco in office five days a week.

• Reports to: CEO