Business Operations Analyst at Eka (Boston, MA)

Eka· Boston, MA·5h ago

Role details

Work type

Onsite

Employment

Full-Time

Job description

Eka Robotics Eka Robotics is on a mission to build intelligence for the physical world - robots that are fast, general, and reliable. Our approach, grounded in physics, unlocks superhuman capabilities. We are defining the frontier of robotics research and deployment. Our team consists of pioneers in robotics and machine learning and skilled operators. We are now hiring to scale our efforts. We are looking for hands-on individuals who are excited to help shape the future of robotics.

Role Overview

We are seeking a Business Operations Analyst to join the Head of Operations’ team and help keep a fast-growing company running effectively and staying ahead of the next issue. This is a broad, hands-on generalist role spanning operational projects, analysis, coordination, and day-to-day execution. You might help evaluate a facilities expansion, build a cost model, prepare company-wide or investor materials, improve an internal process, coordinate a cross-functional project, or take ownership of an ad hoc issue that does not clearly belong to another team. The common thread is a strong ownership mindset. We are looking for someone who can take a loosely defined problem, figure out what needs to happen, drive the follow-ups, and see it through to completion. You should be equally comfortable doing analytical work and handling the practical details required to make things happen; while proactively looking for better, more efficient ways to operate.

Responsibilities

Operational Ownership: Take on a broad range of company-level projects and ad hoc needs, driving them from initial question through execution and follow-up.
Cross-Functional Execution: Coordinate across teams, vendors, and external partners to keep projects moving, resolve issues, and close open loops.
Business Analysis: Support targeted analytical projects, including operational planning, cost modeling, and evaluating new company needs or investments.
Company & Leadership Materials: Help prepare high-quality materials for townhalls, board and investor communications, conferences, external events, and other important company priorities.
Process & Documentation: Improve lightweight internal processes, maintain company documentation, and help ensure important information and recurring operating rhythms stay organized
Special Projects: Partner directly with the Head of Operations and company leadership on emerging priorities across facilities, internal operations, marketing, corporate initiatives, and other areas as the company grows.

Qualifications

2+ years of experience in management consulting, investment banking, venture capital, business operations, a startup, or another fast-paced analytical environment.
High Ownership: Able to take ambiguous problems, determine the right next steps, and independently drive work to completion without requiring constant direction.
Strong Problem Solving: Structured conceptual and analytical thinker who can quickly get up to speed on unfamiliar topics and make sound judgments.
Execution-Oriented: Willing to handle both substantive analytical work and the detailed coordination, follow-up, and administrative work required to get things done.
Resourcefulness & Curiosity: Proactively look for new tools, technologies, and ways of working that can make the company more effective; comfortable experimenting rather than defaulting to how things have always been done.
Organization & Follow-Through: Strong attention to detail with the ability to manage multiple workstreams, prioritize effectively, and reliably close open loops.
Communication: Clear and polished written and verbal communicator who can work effectively across technical teams, leadership, and external partners.
Adaptability: Comfortable working in a fast-moving startup where priorities evolve and the scope of the role will change over time.
Robotics/AI Interest: While you don’t need to be an engineer, you should be excited about the mission of building general-purpose manipulation and foundation models.
Education: B.S. in Business Administration, Engineering, or a related field

Why work at Eka

Cutting-Edge Mission: Work on the frontier of embodied AI and robotics, tackling the fundamental challenge of building machines that can interact with the physical world.
World-Class Team: Join a team of experts from top-tier institutions (MIT, Berkeley, DeepMind, Boston Dynamics) and work alongside leaders in the field.
High Impact, Early Stage: As one of the first ~20 employees, you will have an outsized impact on the company's technology, culture, and direction.
In-Office Culture: All roles are based in Boston, MA, and are in-office, fostering close collaboration on complex hardware and software problems.
Diverse, High-Caliber Roles: Openings span from ML/RL engineering and simulation to mechanical design, embedded systems, and business operations, offering a wide range of challenging work.

About Eka

Company Overview

One-liner: Eka Robotics is building general-purpose, dexterous robots that master physics through self-supervised learning and a novel Vision-Force-Action (VFA) model, aiming to deploy safe, collaborative intelligence into the physical world.
Entity Type: Private (Startup, Pre-Seed / Angel-backed)
Headquarters: Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Founded: 2025
Founders: Pulkit Agrawal and Tuomas Haarnoja

Core Business

Primary industry/industries: Robotics Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Hardware, Automation
Target customers: B2B, Enterprise (logistics, manufacturing, material handling)
Mission or purpose statement: To build intelligence for the physical world in its native language: force, creating robots that master physics, collaborate safely with humans, and generalize across objects, tasks, and environments.

Products & Services

Vision-Force-Action (VFA) Model: A new AI foundation model that unites generality, performance, and safety. It allows robots to perceive the world visually, interact with it through force (the "native language" of physics), and execute actions. This model is designed to overcome the traditional trade-off between generality and performance in robotics.
Dexterous Robotic Manipulation Platform: A hardware and software platform for dexterous, collaborative robots. The platform is designed to be safe around humans, environment-agnostic, and capable of mastering the unexpected through a single model that generalizes across objects, tasks, and environments.

Market Standing

Valuation/Market Cap: Not publicly available (Pre-Seed / Angel-backed startup).
Key Metric: Total Funding: Not publicly available (described as "angel-backed" with no known external funding rounds disclosed).
Notable Investors/Partners: Angel-backed; specific investors not publicly disclosed. The founding team has deep ties to MIT, Berkeley, Harvard, DeepMind, Microsoft, and Boston Dynamics.
Growth Signals: Extremely early stage (founded in 2025). Despite this, the company has a very high growth trajectory in terms of hiring and web presence. LinkedIn reports 6 employees with +300% monthly growth, and 11 active job postings. Website traffic is growing +254.5% monthly.

Competitive Advantages

Founding Team & Research Pedigree: Co-founded by Pulkit Agrawal (MIT professor, leader of the Improbable AI Lab, 2024 IEEE Early Academic Career Award) and Tuomas Haarnoja (ex-DeepMind). The team includes talent from MIT, Berkeley, Harvard, CMU, DeepMind, Microsoft, and Boston Dynamics.
Novel Technical Approach (VFA Model): Their core technology, the Vision-Force-Action (VFA) model, is a claimed breakthrough that unites generality (a single model for many tasks), performance (speed and reliability), and safety (force-based interaction). This is a significant differentiator in the robotics space, which often forces a trade-off between these three attributes.
Self-Supervised Learning & Sim-to-Real: The company pioneers self-supervised learning and sim-to-real reinforcement learning, enabling robots to develop "common sense" and physical intuition automatically without massive amounts of human-labeled data.
World-Class Talent Magnet: Despite being a very early-stage startup, they are attracting top-tier talent from leading tech companies and research labs, indicating a strong technical vision and culture.

Strategic Focus

Productization & Deployment: The company is actively hiring for roles across engineering, hardware, and operations, signaling a strong push to move from research to a deployable product.
Scaling the Team: With 11 open positions for a company of ~6 employees, the immediate strategic focus is on aggressive team building across all functions (ML, hardware, software, operations).
Building the Foundation: Current priorities include developing the core VFA model, building the physical robotic platform, creating robust simulation environments, and establishing operational processes for scaling.

Sources

Job description

Role Overview

Responsibilities

Qualifications

Why work at Eka

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