---
title: 'Operations Lead / Chief of Staff at Innate'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/operations-lead-chief-of-staff-innate-bay-area-fscshe2qh7xx'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-13'
---

# Operations Lead / Chief of Staff at Innate

- **Company:** Innate
- **Location:** Bay Area
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-05-03
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-13
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/innate/8a0a0ea5-8a40-4d32-812c-e2b780f03ce9

## Job description

## Who we are

Before the PC, computing was locked inside big corporations. But thanks to hackers of Silicon Valley, everyone now has a computer and can develop for it. The same should happen for robotics. We're building a platform that makes it accessible: the PC of robotics. An intuitive, open, affordable general-purpose robot for everyone. If you're going to work on something crazy hard, it might as well matter. We're a small team that cares: about the problem, about the people using our robots, and about building a product that will still mean something years from now. We are our own users.

## What we're looking for

We're looking for an Operations Lead / Chief of Staff to be working with the CEO as Innate scales from early customer deployments to real volume. You will help turn a fast-moving robotics company into an operating machine: keeping customers cared for, shipments moving, information findable, and the team focused. This is not a back-office role. You will be close to the product, close to customers, and close to the messy reality of putting robots in the world.

The core stuff that actually excites us:

- Customer experience: keeping early users cared for, informed, and successful.
- Operations: shipments, inventory, vendors, timelines, internal systems, and follow-through.
- Process: turning chaos into clean workflows, docs, CRM systems, and company rhythm.
- Strategy: helping with planning, research, prioritization, and special projects with the CEO.
- AI leverage: finding and (preferably) building internal AI tools that make the team faster.
- Company building: noticing what is broken, owning it, and building the habit or system that keeps it from breaking again.

The kind of person you are You are high-energy, extremely organized, and unusually good at making things happen. You notice details, but you do not get lost in them. You are creative in your ability to solve problems. You might have a consulting, bizops, startup, operations, investing, or generalist background. More importantly, you have strong taste, strong follow-through, and a real interest in both consumer products, hardware, deep tech. You also have experience with supply chain, and are very interested in manufacturing. Finally, you care about the human side of personal robots: trust, delight, reliability, and customer experience. But most importantly, you are ridiculously hungry to make something worthwhile with your life. This is not a job to slack, it's a job to change the world.

## What you'll work on

You will work directly with the CEO to build the operating layer of Innate: customer experience, shipments, internal systems, CRM and processes, planning, documentation, and company operations.

When you apply, tell us about a time you took something ambiguous and made it run.

Founder note: we receive a lot of applications; make sure you find a way to get yourself noticed

## About Innate

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Innate develops personal AI robots that are open, programmable, and teachable, enabling anyone to train physical skills in under 30 minutes.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Pre-Seed, Y Combinator Fall 2024)
- **Headquarters**: Palo Alto, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Axel Peytavin (CEO) and Vignesh Anand

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Consumer Hardware
- Target customers: Builders, developers, and early adopters (B2C for personal robots; B2B for platform/agent licensing)
- Mission or purpose statement: "Unlock the power of robots for everyone" [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/innate-bot)

## Products & Services
- **MARS (robot)**: A general-purpose personal robot shipping with the BASIC programmable foundation agent. Features a 5+1 DOF arm, onboard NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano (8GB), stereo RGB camera, 2D LiDAR, moving head, and extension ports. Runs an open agentic OS that can be programmed with prompts, tools, and physical demonstrations. Pre-order price $1,999 (second batch) [innate.bot](https://www.innate.bot/).
- **BASIC (agentic OS)**: The AI brain that orchestrates multiple models (including GPT, Gemini, Claude, Llama via Groq) for real-time manipulation, navigation, reasoning, and planning. Completely teachable via chat, prompts, and teleoperation. Includes an SDK and a data pipeline for training new physical skills [ycombinator.com](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/innate).
- **Maurice (first product)**: A mobile robot with a trainable arm designed for builders. Learns spaces, remembers context, and autonomously performs tasks like security patrol. Training a new skill takes under 30 minutes of data collection [innate.bot](https://www.innate.bot/about).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private startup)
- **Key Metric**: Total funding $500,000 (Pre-Seed round, closed December 4, 2024, led by Y Combinator with 2 investors) [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/innate-bot)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Y Combinator (lead investor), Nicolas Dessaigne (YC partner), and individual backers [ycombinator.com](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/innate)
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount grew 33% YoY (from 3 to 4 currently, with a team of 7 during YC batch). Active GitHub organization and growing Discord community. Pre-orders live for MARS.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Open, programmable platform**: First robot shipping with a programmable foundation agent. Hardware and software are open-source and extendable – users can add skills, sensors, and tools.
- **Affordability**: At $1,999 (second batch), MARS is significantly cheaper than comparable research or industrial robots.
- **Rapid skill training**: Physical skills can be taught in under 30 minutes using teleoperation, making robotics accessible to non-experts.
- **State-of-the-art AI integration**: Combines frontier LLMs (GPT, Claude, Gemini, Llama) with custom transformers for real-time manipulation and navigation, all orchestrated by a multi-agent system.

## Strategic Focus
- Current priorities: shipping first robots to early builders, collecting teleoperation data to improve the AI brain, expanding the community of developers, and developing a larger robot that can reach countertops.
- Long-term goal: create a general-purpose personal robot platform for everyone, where skills and behaviors are easily shared – akin to the early PC ecosystem [ycombinator.com](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/innate).

## Why Work Here
- Culture: "We love working together. We hold each other's abilities in high regard and promote a culture of collaboration and excellence." The founders seek "talented misfits who want to do their best work inventing a new kind of platform" [innate.bot/about](https://www.innate.bot/about). Degrees don’t matter – skill, creativity, and drive are valued.
- Team: Small, high-impact team of 4-7 people (50% technical, including founders with backgrounds from Stanford HCI, Archer, The Ocean Cleanup). Work spans robotics, AI, and human-computer interaction.
- Location: Palo Alto/Silicon Valley – on-site likely, with a maker-oriented environment. No explicit remote/hybrid policy stated.
- Perks: Early equity, ownership of novel general-purpose hardware/software, and a chance to shape the future of personal robotics.

## Sources
1. [innate.bot](https://www.innate.bot/)
2. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/innate-bot)
3. [innate.bot/about](https://www.innate.bot/about)
4. [ycombinator.com](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/innate)
5. [github.com](https://github.com/innate-inc)

## Other roles at Innate

- [Marketing Intern](https://feeny.ai/job/marketing-intern-innate-bay-area-00kw9r6e4q43) — Bay Area
- [Mechatronics Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/mechatronics-engineer-innate-bay-area-b7n8d6z7trdv) — Bay Area
- [Open Application](https://feeny.ai/job/open-application-innate-bay-area-bbgwkc3w3pt5) — Bay Area