For McKinsey, BCG and Bain consultants who want to own the outcome instead of handing over the deck.
The short version
A venture-backed company building AI into heavy industry is hiring a Chief of Staff to work directly alongside its founder-CEO. If you have spent three to six years at a top-tier firm solving problems for other people’s businesses, this is the seat where you stop recommending and start deciding — with a CEO who will give you real scope from the first month.
You will be in the room for fundraising, close enough to the engineering and manufacturing work to understand it properly, and responsible for turning incomplete information into a call someone can act on.
What you would actually do
Work alongside the CEO. Understand their priorities well enough to anticipate what is needed. Prepare for the meetings that matter, offer an independent view rather than a synthesis of other people’s, and make sure decisions are followed through.
Carry the investor relationship. Work with the CEO on relationships with current and prospective VC investors — outreach, preparation, follow-ups, diligence. Coordinate pitch materials, investor updates and the data room with finance and technical leaders so the numbers and the narrative stand up.
Connect technical progress to business performance. Synthesise what is happening across AI, engineering, manufacturing, operations and finance. Identify what has materially changed, where execution is behind, and what it means for growth and capital needs. This is the part of the job your consulting training prepares you for better than anything else.
Bring financial rigour to strategic decisions. Partner with finance to build models, evaluate business cases and assess growth investments. Test assumptions, compare scenarios, explain the trade-offs.
Keep leadership decisions moving. Run leadership meetings, board preparation and reviews of company priorities. Give every decision an owner and a deadline, resolve the gaps between teams, flag problems early.
Own special projects. A partnership to assess, a market to evaluate, a critical hire to land, an operating problem that cuts across teams — yours from research through execution.
“Consulting teaches you to structure a problem and talk to a CEO as an equal. What it does not teach you is what it feels like to own the number afterwards. The people who make this jump well are the ones who have been itching to find out.”
— Keiran Hathorn, Director, Big Wave Digital
Who this is for
You are at McKinsey, BCG or Bain, or recently left, with roughly three to six years behind you. The strongest profiles tend to come from the operations practices, the private equity and due diligence groups, or from industrials, aerospace, defence and manufacturing casework — but a strong generalist with the right instincts will be taken seriously.
Be aware of what will be tested. This client weights financial depth heavily. You will be asked about a model you personally built or pulled apart, the unit economics you have actually worked through, and any investor-facing material you have owned. Diligence work, value creation plans, operating models with real numbers underneath them — all of it counts. If your experience is strategy decks without the financial substance beneath, this will be a difficult process and it is fairer to say so now.
You can follow complex technical work, ask questions that get to the point, and explain why it matters commercially. Experience in AI, industrial technology, aerospace, defence or manufacturing is a genuine advantage.
You write clearly and briefly, and you can hold a conversation with senior investors, executives and engineers without a partner in the room.
You have judgement and discretion, you follow through, and you challenge assumptions constructively.
You can take ambiguous work and deliver as priorities shift — which, in a company at this stage, they will.
The practical detail
Location. New York City, with regular travel to the company’s facilities.
Travel. Around 50%, with the CEO, at the factories, and with investors, customers and partners. If you are leaving consulting specifically to stop travelling, this is not the role for you.
Compensation. Up to $210,000 base plus equity. There is some flexibility for an exceptional candidate. Worth being direct: this may be a step sideways on base from a senior consulting salary, and the case for the move is the equity, the ownership and the trajectory rather than the cash today.
Work authorisation. You must be a US citizen or green card holder. The company cannot sponsor visas for this role.
“I would rather have a Bain consultant who has run a proper diligence and can defend every line of the model than someone with a banking logo and no operating instinct. The bar is the financial substance, not where you built it.”
— Keiran Hathorn, Director, Big Wave Digital
How to apply
Send your CV with a short note on three things: the casework closest to industrials, manufacturing or private equity diligence; one model or business case you personally owned and what you concluded; and why you want an operating seat now rather than in two years.
I am running this search directly with the CEO, so you will get a straight answer quickly either way.
