Executive Assistant & Office Operations Manager

The Problem

Citizen Health is a small team moving fast on a hard problem: building Ari, an AI advocate for families navigating rare disease. Our two co-founders — the CEO and the Chief Business Officer — split their time across product, fundraising, biopharma and advocacy partnerships, hiring, and the day-to-day of running the company. Every hour they spend wrestling with calendars, chasing interview panels, or figuring out who ordered the standing desks is an hour not spent on patients, partners, or the team.

As we grow, the operational surface area grows with us: more candidates moving through more interview loops, more external meetings across more time zones, a real office with real vendors, and a steady stream of people-ops and business-ops tasks that don't yet have an owner. We need one person who can hold all of it — and make it look easy.

The Role

We're hiring an Executive Assistant & Office Manager to support our CEO and CBO directly, run our San Francisco office, own recruiting coordination end-to-end, and take on ad hoc business operations work across the company. Most companies split this work across three or four people. Here, it's one seat — which means broad scope, real ownership, and a close-up view of how an early-stage company actually runs.

You'll be the connective tissue between the founders and everyone else: the person who knows what's happening this week, who needs what from whom, and what's going to fall through the cracks unless someone catches it. You'll operate with a high degree of autonomy and handle confidential information across compensation, personnel, and business development.

This role is based in San Francisco with regular in-office presence. You'll report to the CEO and work day-to-day with both co-founders.

What You'll Drive

Executive support for the CEO and CBO — Own both calendars, including competing priorities across recurring internal meetings and all external scheduling with investors, partners, advisors, and candidates. Serve as the scheduling and communications point of contact for external stakeholders. Coordinate domestic and international travel end-to-end. Prepare agendas, pre-reads, and meeting materials; track action items afterward and make sure they close. Manage expense reporting for both executives. Triage inbound requests and protect founder time — deciding what needs their attention and what you can resolve yourself.

Board, investor, and leadership logistics — Coordinate board meetings, investor updates, and leadership offsites: scheduling, materials assembly, logistics, and follow-through.

Office and operations management — Run the day-to-day operations of the office. Own vendor relationships and contracts (building management, cleaning, catering, IT, supplies). Manage office supply, equipment, and kitchen inventory within budget. Coordinate IT and workstation setup for new hires and equipment needs for the existing team. Serve as the first point of contact for facilities issues and building management, including mail and shipping, access, seating, and safety.

Recruiting coordination — Schedule and coordinate all candidate interviews and full-day onsites across open roles. Manage interviewer panels and reschedules across multiple calendars, including executive interviews. Own candidate communication and experience from first scheduling contact through onsite — every candidate should leave thinking Citizen is the most organized company they've talked to. Maintain candidate records and keep the pipeline clean in our ATS.

People operations and HR administration — Own and maintain the company-wide onboarding playbook used for every new hire across departments. Own the monthly headcount report covering full-time employees, contractors, and interns. Support onboarding documentation and other HR administration as needed.

Team events and culture — Plan and execute team events, all-hands logistics, offsites, and celebrations. Help make a distributed, fast-moving team feel like one team.

Ad hoc business operations — Take on the projects that don't have an owner yet: vendor and tool procurement, contract tracking, process documentation, internal tooling setup, one-off research and analysis for the founders, and whatever else comes up. You'll see problems before we do and fix them before we ask.

Who You Are

You've supported founders and executives through fast-changing priorities and competing deadlines, handling sensitive information with discretion. You're proactive about building the systems and processes a growing company needs. You identify the gap before someone has to point it out to you, and put a solution in place.

You're organized, steady under pressure, and a problem solver. You're proactive rather than reactive identifing issues before they become problems and keep people informed without being asked. You manage multiple priorities at once without losing track of any of them, and you have good judgment about what's urgent, what's important, and what can wait. You handle sensitive information with discretion.

You have worked and thrived at scalling companies where the scope is still being defined and getting something done often means figuring it out yourself.

Must-Have Skills

• 4+ years of experience in executive support, office management, operations, or a comparable role, with at least 2 years directly supporting C-level executives or founders.

• Demonstrated experience owning complex calendars, travel, and external scheduling across multiple time zones and stakeholder types (investors, partners, candidates).

• Experience coordinating recruiting logistics — interview scheduling, panel management, candidate communication — at a company actively hiring across multiple roles.

• Track record of running an office or facilities function: vendor management, budgets, inventory, IT and equipment coordination.

• Exceptional written and verbal communication — polished with external stakeholders, crisp and direct internally.

• Proven discretion handling confidential compensation, personnel, and business information.

• Fluency with the modern operations toolkit: Google Workspace, Slack, Notion, an ATS, expense and travel tools, and the ability to pick up new software quickly.

• Based in the San Francisco Bay Area and able to be in the office 3 days a week (Tue/Wed/Thu).

Preferred Skills

• Experience at a venture-backed startup between Seed and Series B, where you owned operations broadly rather than a narrow slice.

• Exposure to HR administration or people operations — onboarding, headcount tracking, benefits coordination, or HRIS tools.

• Experience supporting board meetings, investor relations, or fundraising logistics.

• Experience planning offsites and team events for distributed teams.

• Comfort with light data work — building trackers, headcount reports, or simple dashboards in Sheets or similar.

• Interest in healthcare, life sciences, or mission-driven companies; familiarity with the rare disease community is a plus but not required.

Who We Are

Citizen Health was founded on the belief — shaped by firsthand lived experiences navigating healthcare — that having the right advocate is the single most important factor in achieving better care and outcomes. By uniquely combining data, AI, and community, Citizen is building a personalized AI advocate powered by patients' complete medical histories and data from thousands of other patients to generate personalized insights for clinical decisions and day-to-day challenges. Starting in rare and complex conditions, patients share their data in exchange for value, enabling biopharma and researchers with seamless access to patients and regulatory-grade data, shaving years off drug development for much-needed treatments.

Citizen is founded by experienced entrepreneurs with multiple successes under their belts and is funded by top-tier investors including 8VC, Transformation Capital, and Headline Ventures, among others. We are a mission-driven team excited to be building the future of consumer healthcare.

Why Join Us

• Direct, daily partnership with two co-founders — you'll see how an early-stage company is built from the inside and have real influence on how it runs.

• Unusual breadth. Executive support, office operations, recruiting, people ops, and business ops in one seat — with a clear path to grow into a broader operations or people leadership role as the company scales.

• A real mission with real patients. The people using our product are navigating rare diseases with their children. Keeping the company running smoothly directly affects whether they get the right diagnosis, the right benefits, the right clinical trial.

• Ownership from day one. You'll build the systems, not inherit them.

• A supportive culture of learning, experimentation, and innovation, where new ideas are encouraged and explored.

Compensation & Benefits

• Competitive salary + equity

• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance

• Unlimited PTO, including 12 weeks paid parental leave

• Hybrid role based in our San Francisco office

• Work-from-anywhere 30 days per year

• Company offsites

Our Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion

Citizen Health is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We welcome applicants of all backgrounds, identities, and experiences — regardless of race, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, age, disability, or veteran status.

Don't meet every qualification? We believe that passion, curiosity, and the right mindset matter as much as a checklist of skills. If you're excited about what we're building, we encourage you to apply.