Head of Operations · Dija
the first operator building an AI-native sales company from the inside.
Location requirement: You must be physically located in Cyprus. This is a hard filter, not a preference. Applications from outside Cyprus will not be considered, regardless of relocation willingness on the candidate's side.
The 40-SDR, 20-AE, VP-of-Sales, RevOps-team, seven-figure-CRM-bill model is already obsolete. Dija is the AI infrastructure replacing it. Our thesis: the next $1B sales companies run on single-digit headcount. We plan to be one and arm the rest.
We need a Head of Operations who wants to run the company that proves that thesis, not watch someone else do it from a Series C seat two years late.
You report to the founder but hold full authority over systems. You are the ultimate generalist, the operational spine that makes Dija as ruthless inside as the product we sell outside.
Why we're worth your 8 days
Stage: Bootstrapped and profitable. Income from our customers exceeds our expenses.
Experience: We're building Dija because we've lived the pain, not because AI is trending. The specific thing we got wrong last time is the thing we are deliberately not repeating here.
Team today: Small by design. The thesis works or fails on headcount discipline.
Runway: Indefinite, we are already profitable. We know the number to the dollar. We expect you to know it better than we do by week 6.
Seat scarcity: exactly one Head of Operations exists in this company's lifetime. Once the seat is filled, the window closes. The person in the chair compounds authority and context from day one. There is no "v2" of this role.
If the stage math doesn't pencil for you, don't apply. If it does, keep reading. The upside from here is the whole pitch.
What you'll own, and what it becomes
First 6 months (what you do Monday)
The Plumbing: Finance, legal, compliance, payroll, and hiring logistics. The lights stay on, the contracts are airtight, the team gets paid, and the numbers on the board are numbers we trust.
AI Workflow Adoption: You don't talk about AI. You ship it. You dogfood our own tech and build internal AI workflows that replace the admin and ops work that would otherwise eat a headcount.
Real Sales: When pipeline demands it, you don't say "not my job." You take the call, run the demo, and help close the deal. Week-one you might be sitting in a prospect call. That's the gig.
12 to 36 months (what it becomes)
Month 12: You own internal systems end-to-end. You've replaced 3 would-be hires (finance coordinator, recruiting coordinator, ops analyst) with AI workflows you built yourself.
Month 24: COO in title, not just function. A lean team under you, the ones you hired, the ones who raised the bar. You sit next to the founder in board prep, investor updates, and pricing/ICP calls that shape the next round.
Month 36: If the thesis plays out, you are the senior operator of record at a category-defining company. You decide whether the next chapter is here or whether you go build your own, and we'll back you if you do.
You act like an owner on day zero. You already take personal responsibility for outcomes you have no contractual right to own. Your current manager has probably told you to "stay in your lane." You couldn't.
You are a zero-to-one operator. You thrive in the chaos of early-stage startups and know how to create order without creating bureaucracy. "Process" is a means, never an identity.
You read a P&L like prose and a SaaS vendor contract like a novel. No CPA, no law degree, but you've argued a line item, redlined an MSA, and saved the company real money doing it.
You are technically dangerous. You live in tools like Notion, Zapier, Linear, and Claude. You default to automating repetitive work before you default to hiring.
You fix the broken calendar link at 11 pm instead of scheduling a meeting to discuss who owns calendars.
Why you'd actually take this, and the three objections we'd have if we were you
Every operator job ad tells you why they want you. Here's the unvarnished version on both sides.
Take this seat if: you've been a Chief of Staff or first ops hire, hit the ceiling, and want to write the playbook instead of scaling someone else's. You've already shipped automation that replaced a hire. You'd rather own a machine that runs $10M ARR on 8 people than manage 80 doing the same.
Do not take this seat if: you need a predictable week, a team on day one, or a VP above you to sign off. If your best story from the last 3 years is a deck you made and not a machine you built or a number you moved, this isn't your seat.
We're saying this plainly because hiring the wrong person into this seat costs 6-12 months, for us and for you. The most respectful thing we can do is be loud about who this isn't for.
This isn't a FAANG comp package. It's authority and bonus upside, stacked on purpose.
Base: competitive for early-stage senior operators.
Authority and access: full autonomy over finance, legal, hiring, and internal systems from week one. No COO above you to "align" with, no board committee to pre-wire. Direct, daily, unfiltered founder line on board prep, pricing, hiring, and category positioning from week one, not as observer but decision-maker.
Bonuses that assume success: when we cross ARR milestones, bonuses kick in. When we hit the next round, you're in the room setting the comp design for every hire that follows, the first time most operators ever touch that from the inside.
Benefits: 5 weeks vacation, annual learning budget, top-shelf hardware.
What we do not offer: big-company process, management layers, a 9-to-5, a title on a door, or a guaranteed outcome. We won't promise that the thesis plays out. We will promise that if it does, you are the senior operator of record.
Two filters decide whether we make an offer. Both are non-negotiable. Neither is negotiable for the right candidate either, so don't waste the breath.
1. You teach us something on the first call. If we're training you on your own function, our life gets worse before it gets better. You should walk in telling us what to do in sales, engineering, finance, ops, legal, and people, not the other way around. We finish the call with a notebook of things you surfaced that we hadn't thought about yet.
2. You raise the average of the team you're joining. A-players show up with decision memos: 20 vendors called, 3 options tested, 2 rejected, one chosen. B-players show up with problem statements and drag 8s down to 7s. If hiring you doesn't make Dija measurably sharper on day one, we've made the company worse.
If either feels like a stretch, this isn't your move, and we respect you for recognizing it. Most of the market self-selects out here. That's the point.
What we won't do, and what we're bad at
We'd rather tell you now than have you find out in week three.
We won't build a layered COO function. You are the layer. If you wanted to hire two directors under you to "free up your time," this seat will disappoint you.
We won't staff a bigger team before we've automated the work the current team is drowning in, and we won't approve your first hire until it's been painfully obvious for 30 days. Headcount discipline is the thesis.
We're bad at over-communication. The founder defaults to "handled" without telling anyone. You will have to pull information that a bigger company would push to you. If that drives you crazy, know that now.
We are not good at formal processes. If you need SOP culture from day one, you will have to build it yourself, and we'll fund it, but we won't build it for you.
The best operators get hired within 8 days of starting to look. We respect that window, and we'll match it: 48 hours from submit for a human read, 5 business days to a 30-min call with the founder if you clear the gates, 14 days worst case from first contact to a yes/no decision. If you already have a competing offer on a deadline, mention it in the call and we'll match your timeline when we can.
