COO

About the Company

We are a Series A semiconductor company building the Fabric VPU, custom silicon purpose-built to generate zero-knowledge proofs. Our chip is in stable silicon, manufactured through a Tier 1 foundry relationship, and we are moving into volume production.

We have signed early customers, including emerging companies and individual operators in the cryptographic processing space. Our target market is enterprises in financial services, digital asset infrastructure, and high-security computing, including large-scale banking institutions building out dedicated cryptographic processing capacity.

With the chip itself as the starting point, the larger opportunity is what it enables: taking what the silicon can do, deploying it into data centers, networking it together, and turning hardware into a global service platform. We are looking for the operator who is inspired and driven to lead the vendors, team, and execution needed to build and run it.

The Role

This is a founding COO position. You will step into a technically strong, lean team and a product that works, and build everything around it: the operational infrastructure, the vendor and manufacturing relationships, and the management layer that lets the company scale seamlessly.

The founders will remain closely involved in a structured transition period, passing off knowledge across hardware operations and chip architecture context. After the transition, you have full operational authority and accountability. You will be operating in a lean, high-trust environment where you are expected to lead from the front.

Compensation

• Base Salary: $275k
• Performance bonus: $150k - 325k
• Benefits
• 401k matching

Performance bonuses:

• $50,000 for every 6-month period of fully stable platform operations that fulfill product guidelines, against agreed measurement criteria
• $50,000 upon successful tapeout of a chip upgrade
• Combined target performance bonus: $150,000 per year under normal operational execution

Exceptional performance bonus up to $175k available for measurable outcomes that exceed the core operational mandate. Measurement criteria are agreed in advance.

In place of equity, this role carries a bonus structure generous enough to reflect real ownership of outcomes.  Compensation is designed to reward operators who deliver.

What You Will Own

• Full operational leadership of the company post-transition, reporting directly to a founder
• Hardware operations accountability: owning system design and fabrication vendor selection, design process between existing team and vendors, contract manufacturing relationships, volume production ramp, and assembly timelines, in partnership with the existing hardware engineering team
• Vendor and contractor management: scoping, selecting, and managing external partners across hardware, software, and services
• Data center strategy: owning vendor and facility selection and the relationships behind our managed colocation deployment, and anticipating and closing operational resilience gaps before they become production problems, so the platform is demonstrably secure and audit-ready for regulated financial institutions.
• Service platform buildout: setting the business requirements for the hardware-as-a-service delivery model, including uptime, cost-per-unit-served, SLA structure, usage metering and billing, and holding the engineering team accountable for meeting them.
• Team leadership: managing and developing a small, senior engineering team; supporting the growth of internal talent into leadership roles
• Close collaboration with the sales team: working with sales to ensure the product offering is competitive and fits customer needs, particularly for regulated financial institution buyers
• Chip lifecycle coordination: owning the tapeout or respin timeline, resourcing, and cross-team coordination for the Fabric VPU chip; architecture decisions remain with the founder and the existing chip team
  

What You Need

• Demonstrated experience operating or scaling a hardware or hardware-as-a-service business, not just software.
• Experience selecting and managing hardware manufacturing partners across complex, multi-vendor supply chains, including production ramps and contract manufacturing relationships, and holding them accountable for cost, quality, and timeline.
• Experience holding infrastructure or facility vendors accountable for security, compliance, and resilience standards required by regulated or high-security customers.
• A people management track record that includes identifying and addressing performance or skill gaps before they became operational risks, and building repeatable processes.
• Deep enough understanding of semiconductor or embedded hardware development to hold your own with engineers and hold vendors accountable.
  

What Would Strengthen Your Application

• Background in cryptographic hardware, security silicon, or high-assurance computing infrastructure, along with foundry supply chain familiarity.
• Prior experience establishing or scaling data center infrastructure, including managed facility deployment, FAE coordination, and hardware integration at scale.
• Existing relationships or direct B2B sales cycle experience in financial services or digital asset infrastructure, particularly with regulated institutions.
• Fluency with AI tools and agents as operational infrastructure, with concrete examples of deployments that removed manual work or compressed decision cycles.
• Experience operating at Series A to Series B scale, in a small, high-velocity team where strategy and execution are the same function.
  

The Opportunity

The cryptographic processing market is entering a period of significant infrastructure investment. Financial institutions, digital asset platforms, and high-security enterprises are building out dedicated processing capacity at scale, and purpose-built silicon is replacing general-purpose solutions. We are positioned at the front of that shift with working hardware, a Tier 1 foundry relationship, and early customers under contract.

This is a rare opportunity to step into a technically credible, commercially early-stage company with real product in hand and build the operations for commecial scaling. This role is structured as a high-cash, performance-heavy package, reflecting the company's confidence in near-term commercial execution. Compensation is designed to reward operators who deliver.