About Us
Klara is an open source services company specialising in FreeBSD and OpenZFS. We help organisations around the world build, run, and rely on open source infrastructure. We're a distributed team people across several countries, and a good part of our work serves clients who specifically want infrastructure partners outside the US.
The Role
This is a Chief of Staff role first, with a light executive-support element. You'll be the CEO's right hand — turning priorities into plans, plans into momentum, and momentum into things that actually ship. You'll sit close to the centre of the company, see how all the pieces fit together, and make sure the important work doesn't slip through the cracks.
- ~70-75% Chief of Staff: driving cross-team initiatives, prepping decisions, keeping leadership priorities on track, and acting as a trusted proxy for the CEO.
- ~25-30% executive support: the calendar, travel, and logistics that keep the CEO's time well spent.
This is a high-trust position. You will have significant exposure to sensitive business, customer, and personnel information, and are expected to handle it accordingly.
Responsibilities
Drive Execution
- Turn the CEO's priorities into clear plans with owners, timelines, and progress tracking
- Run point on cross-team initiatives that lack an obvious home, and see them through
- Track what is actually happening versus what should be, and surface gaps early
Support decisions
- Prepare agendas, briefings, and the context the CEO needs to decide quickly
- Capture decisions and action items, and follow up so they don't stall
- Help run leadership meetings, planning cycles, and offsites
Act as a trusted proxy
- Represent the CEO where they can't be present, and carry context back
- Handle confidential information with discretion and sound judgement
- Communicate clearly across a team spanning multiple countries, time zones, and languages
Manage the CEO's time (light EA)
- Own the calendar: protect focus time, resolve conflicts, coordinate across time zones
- Arrange travel and itineraries
- Triage the inbox: flag what needs the CEO, handle the routine, keep things moving
- Manage expenses and general admin
Qualifications
- 7+ years of experience supporting a CEO or senior executive directly
- Demonstrated ability to coordinate across functions and keep complex initiatives moving without being the subject matter expert
- Strong written communication; comfortable corresponding with senior internal and external stakeholders
- High discretion with confidential information — this is a baseline expectation, not a differentiator
- Familiarity with project or task management tools
- Technically literate enough to track and coordinate technical projects independently