COO-in-Residence

About AINAD

AINAD is a UK venture studio that creates and grows AI and SaaS businesses across areas such as health, education, fintech, and productivity. The studio works alongside its ventures as an active co-founder, offering support in product, engineering, growth, capital, and operations so ideas can progress to scale more quickly and with stronger discipline.

Role overview

As COO-in-Residence, you will serve as the studio’s most senior operator. You will work closely with selected portfolio companies in an embedded or fractional COO capacity, while also helping establish the operating model for AINAD itself. This role is broader than a single-company operations position; it is designed for someone who enjoys converting strategy into repeatable execution across multiple startups.

The role suits an experienced operator such as a COO, VP Operations, General Manager, or Chief of Staff with strong operations experience who wants to apply that background across several early-stage ventures rather than only one business.

What you will do

• Shape and continually improve AINAD’s operating framework, including planning cycles, OKRs, weekly and monthly routines, KPI dashboards, and review processes.
• Serve as a senior operating partner to selected ventures, particularly during the move from zero to one and into early growth.
• Turn strategic direction into practical execution plans with priorities, milestones, owners, deadlines, and dependencies.
• Create lean but reliable processes that help product, engineering, growth, finance, and operations teams work effectively together.
• Build and strengthen operating rhythms such as stand-ups, leadership meetings, sprint and launch planning, retrospectives, and performance reviews.
• Spot operational blockers that reduce speed or quality, such as unclear ownership, weak decision-making, communication breakdowns, or gaps in process.
• Develop scale-ready systems for hiring, onboarding, vendor coordination, internal communication, and reporting suited to the company stage.
• Help ventures prepare for key scale milestones, including fundraising, headcount growth, and geographic or product expansion.
• Guide founders and emerging leaders on execution habits, delegation, prioritisation, and building high-performing teams.
• Support investor and board communication by helping articulate progress, operational risks, and plans for scale.

What we are looking for

• Substantial experience in senior operating positions such as COO, VP Operations, General Manager, Chief of Staff, or Head of Operations in startups or scale-ups.
• A strong record of improving execution quality, operational discipline, and cross-functional coordination in fast-growing environments.
• Experience working across multiple products, business lines, or ventures, with the ability to switch contexts without losing depth.
• A systems-oriented mindset with the ability to design simple, practical frameworks that teams will actually adopt.
• Comfort working across product, growth, finance, and people topics as a broad-based operator rather than a narrow specialist.
• Strong communication and facilitation skills, with the ability to create alignment in ambiguous and fast-moving situations.
• High accountability and low ego, with the flexibility to move between strategy and hands-on problem solving.
• Real interest in venture building, AI-native businesses, and helping multiple founders execute more effectively.

What we offer

• An operating-leverage role where you help shape the foundations of several ventures, not just one.
• Considerable freedom to define how venture creation, portfolio support, and studio operations are run.
• Close collaboration with founders, product leaders, commercial leaders, and investors on ambitious early-stage ideas.
• A flexible arrangement that can be full-time or high-commitment fractional, to be agreed, with competitive compensation and meaningful upside linked to impact.
• The chance to establish the operating culture of a venture studio and help multiple startups avoid common execution mistakes.

Location

The role is hybrid and flexible, with a preference for candidates who can spend significant time in the UK, especially London, and attend occasional in-person sessions with founders and the studio team.

How to apply

If you are a senior operator who enjoys turning ideas into disciplined execution across several AI-native ventures, AINAD would like to hear from you. Share your CV or LinkedIn profile along with a short note explaining why this COO-in-Residence opportunity is a strong fit for you.