Operations Lead

Company overview

Kovari is building robots to transform how physical labor is carried out, with a particular focus on hospitality. The company’s aim is to create general-purpose robots that can handle repetitive, physical tasks and help hospitality businesses keep running smoothly. Kovari sees the challenge of getting practical robots into real businesses as a major innovation problem and combines commercial insight with rapid product development to solve it. Since starting out, the company has raised more than $6M from leading investors.

The team values fast experimentation, engineering discipline, and deploying real machines in real-world settings. Based in San Francisco, the company works in person.

Role summary

The Operations Lead will function as a key problem-solver across the organization, taking charge of important work that sits between teams and ensuring the highest-impact issues are moved forward. The position covers strategy, operations, fundraising support, and special projects spanning both robotics and hospitality operations. You may shift from preparing board materials to negotiating with vendors to building new workflows, depending on what the business needs most.

Key responsibilities

• Lead ambiguous, high-priority initiatives from problem definition through execution, often across multiple functions.
• Create board decks, investor updates, fundraising documents, and support due diligence processes.
• Own the company’s operating rhythm, including OKRs, staff meetings, planning cycles, and follow-up on action items.
• Manage special projects across hardware, deployment, and hotel operations, including market research, hiring support, and procurement.
• Develop, improve, and standardize internal systems, processes, and tools as the company grows.

What the company is looking for

• Experience leading ambiguous, cross-functional work in a fast-moving environment such as a startup, VC firm, consulting, banking, or an operating role.
• Strong analytical and structured problem-solving ability, with the capacity to turn complex issues into clear action plans.
• Excellent written and spoken communication skills, including the ability to independently produce board-level materials.
• Strong operational discipline, including process ownership, timeline management, and accountability.
• Broad business understanding across strategy, finance, and operations, with the ability to learn unfamiliar domains quickly.
• Comfort working with technical and commercial topics; prior engineering expertise is not required, but familiarity with hardware or robotics is helpful.

Values and work style

• A strong bias toward learning and rapid growth.
• A commitment to continuously improving the quality of the work.
• A low-ego, high-ownership mindset.
• Deep commitment to the mission and willingness to work in person in a demanding environment rather than a standard 9-to-5 schedule.

Additional information

Kovari is building something difficult and expects team members to be fully engaged in the mission. The role is based onsite in San Francisco, CA.